Molecularly targeted therapy is a novel approach in cancer treatment. Imatinib, a specific tyrosine kinase inhibitor, since its inception in 1990s, has become the first-line drug in management of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) chronic phase. It has also shown promising results in treatment of gastro-intestinal stromal tumors, clonal eosinophilic disorders and Philadelphia chromosome positiv...

Progress in understanding the genetic changes that drive tumorigenesis has enabled the development of molecularly targeted anticancer therapy. The first small molecule targeted to a specific protein was imatinib mesylate (Gleevec, STI571), which is used to treat chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). A recent article presents a computational model with which to study the treatment response in CML pati...

Imatinib mesylate is a receptor kinase inhibitor approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of malignant metastatic and/or unresectable gastrointestinal stromal tumors and chronic myelogenous leukemia. Although imatinib is generally well tolerated, certain adverse drug reactions are common. These include gastrointestinal side-effects such as diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, as...

The BCR-ABL kinase inhibitor imatinib mesylate is currently the standard therapy for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Despite the remarkable results achieved with imatinib for the treatment of CML, the emergence of resistance to this drug has become a significant problem. Mutations within the ABL kinase domain have been identified as the main mechanism of resistance to imatinib. Ot...

Imatinib mesylate is a small molecule that binds to the ATPbinding pocket of Abelson kinase (c-Abl) and blocks efficiently its tyrosine kinase activity. c-Abl is an important downstream signalling molecule of TGF[1]. The importance of c-Abl for the pro-fibrotic effects of TGFis emphasized by the observation that the induction of extracellular matrix proteins by TGFis strongly decreased in cells...

Imatinib mesylate (STI571), a potent tyrosine kinase inhibitor, is successfully used in the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors. However, the intended chronic oral administration of imatinib may lead to development of cellular resistance and subsequent treatment failure. Indeed, several molecular mechanisms leading to imatinib resistance have already be...

experimental  autoimmune  encephalomyelitis (eae)  is  a  mouse  model  for  multiple sclerosis (ms), this autoimmune disease is mainly mediated by adaptive and innate immune responses that lead to an inflammatory demyelination and axonal damage. imatinib mesylate is a  selective protein  tyrosine kinase inhibitor  with immunomodulatory  properties  that abrogates multiple signal transduction p...

PURPOSE Infection with Varicella-Zoster virus (VZV) is an exceptionally rare complication of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) without stem cell transplantation. We report 16 patients with CML who developed VZV infection during imatinib mesylate therapy. PATIENTS AND METHODS From July 1998 until February 2002, 771 patients were included in 11 imatinib mesylate studies for all CML phases in t...

PURPOSE Recently, gene amplification and overexpression of KIT as well as activating mutations in the KIT gene have been described to occur in certain subsets of melanoma. These findings suggest KIT as a potential target for therapy with imatinib mesylate in these melanomas. To date, data on the KIT status in uveal melanoma (UM) is limited. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN We analyzed the expression of th...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to identify the reasons for failure in adherence to imatinib mesylate treatment in chronic myeloid leukemia. METHODS A retrospective review was performed of 100 non-electronic records of patients with Ph(+) chronic myeloid leukemia treated with imatinib mesylate. The study period was from January 2001 to January2011. Data were analyzed by Chi-Square and Cor...