The drug, which is already approved as a treatment for a type of leukemia and for a type of stomach and intestine cancer, has now been submitted for approval as a treatment for a rare type of skin cancer and three uncommon blood cancers.
These filings underscore how cancers of different origin and location can share common pathways that respond to the same targeted treatment.
“Thanks to the success of targeted therapies like Glivec, these filings speak to the fundamental shift that we are seeing in the approach to cancer treatment,” said Diane Young, vice president and global head of clinical development at Novartis Oncology. “One day, cancer may no longer be classified by site, or even by single genes or proteins, but instead by the way in which the cancer is expressed. This could potentially give rise to more targeted treatment options such as Glivec.”
Gleevec/Glivec targets the activity of proteins called tyrosine kinases that play important roles within some cancer cells.