BOSTON -- Last year, the Food and Drug Administration approved the cancer drug Gleevac in record time because it appeared to dramatically change the odds for certain patients.
Now, many experts predict it will do the same for many types of cancers.
"At one point I fell down the back stairs in the kitchen, and after that I was just purple," Pinky Hart said.
NewsCenter 5's Heather Unruh said that as a nurse, Hart knew that kind of bruising was a bad sign. Even before the doctor could tell her, she asked, "Do I have leukemia?"
"He said, 'Yes.' And I said, 'What kind?' and he told me and I said, 'What's the prognosis?' And he said, 'Three to five years and there's no real treatment,'" Hart said.
Hart couldn't live without hope, so she searched until she found a doctor who could give her some.
"He just looked me right in the eye and he said, 'Don't worry, you may not die of this disease,'" Hart said.
He enrolled her in a clinical trial for Gleevac, an oral drug that was showing tremendous promise.
"It's amazing. The complete remission rate is about 95 to 98 percent," Massachusetts General Hospital Dr. Philip Amrein said.
Gleevac works differently from other drugs in that it zeros in on the cancer cells without affecting the normal ones. Some researchers believe it will change the way new drugs are developed.
"The brilliance of Gleevac is that it targets an enzyme that is specific and necessary for the leukemia," Amrein said.
Researchers said that there are no serious side effects.
"You often think of patients with nausea, low blood counts, patients losing hair having mouth sores -- there's very little of that with this drug," Amrein said.
It's been four years since the treatment and Hart is feeling healthy and hopeful.
"I'm feeling like I've got some life ahead of me, and I'm going to see my son get married, and I'm hopefully going to be a grandmother," Hart said.
Gleevac is also effective for a certain kind of stomach tumor and will soon be studied on lung, prostate and brain cancers.
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