Doug Jenson is living proof that research and recoveries go hand in hand. Seven years after learning he had chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), Doug is going strong thanks to discoveries made at OHSU.
Doug’s prognosis wasn’t always this rosy. The severe flu-like symptoms of interferon therapy left this normally vibrant man debilitated for more than six months. “I couldn’t get out of my chair,” he says.
Realizing that interferon was killing Doug faster than his leukemia, his doctors referred him to OHSU. Doug was accepted into the first clinical trial of a promising new anticancer agent developed at OHSU by Brian Druker, M.D., in conjunction with Novartis Pharmaceuticals. That drug – Gleevec – has prolonged Doug’s life while making medical history as the first successful targeted anticancer therapy.
To scientists, Gleevec is special because it can destroy defective cancer causing genes without harming healthy cells. To Doug, it’s special because it helped him live to see his two youngest grandchildren.
But the Gleevec revolution is only beginning. The next challenge is to extend its power to other diseases and to other patients like Doug.
OHSU’s new biomedical research building is where the promise of targeted therapies will become reality. Here a new multidisciplinary Center for Cancer Cell Signaling, housing capabilities such as cell signaling research and synthetic chemistry, will provide a fertile environment for collaboration between OHSU’s world-class cancer researchers.
For every disease, there is a Gleevec waiting to be discovered. OHSU is where the search begins.
