Leukemia drug heralds molecularly targeted era.

Nearly 20 years later, Druker the physician has helped a better way materialize in the form of STI571, a drug that selectively targets chronic myelogenous leukemia cells without any of the traditional chemotherapy side effects. The darling of two recent scientific conferences, STI571, which is owned by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., East Hanover, N.J., passed phase I clinical testing with promising results and has entered phase II trials that will enroll several hundred patients in the United States and Europe.