Tens of thousands of people are alive today because of Dr. Brian Druker, of the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute. Druker, M.D., turned a lethal leukemia into a manageable illness. He also showed that a drug could target cancer cells while leaving healthy cells mostly unharmed.

Dr. Druker helped develop Gleevec, the first medication that specifically targets cancer cells. Patients with a devastating form of leukemia — chronic myeloid leukemia, or CML — could suddenly expect a normal life span.

In 2001, Gleevec gained FDA approval in record time. Gleevec landed on the cover of Time magazine and established Dr. Druker as a cancer pioneer. Dr. Druker’s work launched the era of precision cancer medicine, leading to hundreds of other therapies.

Chemistry set locked away

Brian Druker was born in 1955 and grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. In a 2021 interview, he said that when he was a boy, he dreamed of becoming a baseball player. He also had a strong interest in science; his father locked away his first chemistry set out of fear that he’d blow up the house.

When the time came to apply to college, he was rejected by Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and Yale. His brother suggested he go to the University of California at San Diego. There, Druker majored in chemistry and went on to medical school.

Radical idea

As a medical student, Druker was inspired by the progress doctors had made in treating childhood leukemia. In this type of cancer, white blood cells multiply uncontrollably.

Druker decided to focus on figuring out what was wrong with the cells. At first, he pursued research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. After several years, his boss told him his ideas were too impractical.

Dr. Druker didn’t listen. He packed his bags and moved to OHSU, where he dived back into his quest: a way to target the abnormal cells in CML.

Leukemia cells keep dividing because they have a genetic mutation. This mutation produces a molecular switch that is stuck in the “on” position. The switch tells the cell to keep dividing. Dr. Druker wanted to home in on that switch and shut it off.

At the time, this was a radical idea. The drugs then used in chemotherapy attacked all cells. No one had figured out how to make a drug that aimed only at cancer cells.

But Dr. Druker was convinced his strategy would work if he could turn the switch into a target.

“Thank you for saving my life”

Dr. Druker has won a cascade of accolades and awards, including the prestigious Lasker-DeBakey Award for Clinical Medical Research, the Sjoberg Prize, the Japan Prize and the Tang Prize.

But he derives the most inspiration from his patients.

“At least once a month, an email shows up from a patient with CML saying: ‘I just want to thank you for saving my life,’ ” he said in 2021. “What could be more satisfying for a scientist-clinician than that?”