Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International - December 1, 2004
Kaposi's sarcoma is a cancer characterized by soft purplish lesions on the skin, mucous membranes and internal organs. The incidence of it declined in developed countries with the arrival of antiretroviral AIDS therapies but it remains a big problem in the Third World.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School researchers, writing in Tuesday's Journal of Clinical Oncology, reported imatinib mesylate, or Gleevec, inhibits key pathways that spur cancer growth. KS tumors regressed or stabilized after four weeks of treatment in a group of 10 patients.
"Imatinib is a targeted therapy originally shown to be effective in treating chronic myelogenous leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors. This study and others are showing that the drug is also active in other cancers that express some of the same proteins," wrote Dr. Henry B. Koon, study author.
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