AbbVie leukemia drug impresses in early-stage trial

[riky]

AbbVie leukemia drug impresses in early-stage trial

An experimental AbbVie Inc drug for leukemia controlled or eliminated signs of the disease in more than 80 percent of patients who had failed to benefit from previous treatments, an unprecedented finding that could spur use of the medicine for other cancers, researchers said. The AbbVie drug, ABT-199, works by blocking a protein called BCL-2 that allows cancer cells to overcome a natural mechanism called programmed cell death, in which the body kills off defective or cancerous cells. The favorable data was seen in a phase I, or early-stage, trial involving 67 patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia who had not been helped by chemotherapy or relapsed from such treatment. "To achieve that magnitude of complete remission is extraordinarily promising and unprecedented in this particular type of leukemia, among patients with otherwise resistant disease," Dr. John Seymour, a researcher with the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia, said in a telephone interview.

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