Tiny mutation triggers drug resistance for patients with one type of leukemia
Thursday, May 29, 2014 - 04:00
in Health & Medicine
A multi-institutional team of researchers has pinpointed exactly what goes wrong when chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients develop resistance to ibrutinib, a highly effective, precisely targeted anti-cancer drug. In a correspondence published online May 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine, they show how the mutation triggers resistance. Their finding could guide development of new agents to treat drug-resistant disease.