Other medicines, including multiple myeloma drug Velcade, from Millennium, and rheumatoid arthritis medicine Enbrel, from Amgen.
At that point, the results were too good to ignore, especially in multiple myeloma.
My dad died of Multiple Myeloma, Cancer of the bone marrow, when I was 15.
No new treatment has been created for multiple myeloma in the past 30 years.
That could lead to a quandary for doctors who are already prescribing Thalomid for multiple myeloma.
The drug is used to treat multiple myeloma, but has never been approved for that.
It is now increasingly used as a treatment for multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow.
It has worked phenomenally for organizations like the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.
An accelerated strategy for MDS and multiple myeloma might shave a year off the approval process, Barer says.
Celgene has already submitted an application to the FDA to approve the drug for multiple myeloma as well.
These mutant stem cells already have been found in breast cancer, two types of leukemia and multiple myeloma.
"This is an exceptional model in public-private partnership, " says Kathy Giusti , head of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.
Her husband, a cardiologist named Ira Wolmer, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma at the unusually early age of 35.
After all, thalidomide is still used as a treatment for multiple myeloma (a plasma cell cancer) and leprosy.
Within the next six months Celgene will likely win approval to market both Thalomid and Revlimid as treatments for multiple myeloma.
Take Millennium Pharmaceuticals (nasdaq: MLNM - news - people ), which makes the multiple myeloma drug Velcade .
Giusti founded the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation in 1998 with the goal of using her drug industry know-how to get treatments developed.
When I was first diagnosed with multiple myeloma nine years ago, only half of newly diagnosed patients survived more than five years.
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The drug, sold under the brand name Aredia, was originally used to treat bone complications caused by breast cancer and multiple myeloma.
It has also improved the lot of those afflicted with multiple myeloma, another cancer, and a variety of autoimmune disorders including lupus.
An initial human test of the combo--chemotherapy drug idarubicin and Millennium Pharmaceuticals' multiple myeloma drug Velcade--is under way at the University of Kentucky.
But with few other options for treating multiple myeloma, which is often fatal within a few years, doctors have used the drug anyway.
And now, thanks to Adams, Infinity has developed in record time another experimental drug to fight multiple myeloma, the same cancer targeted by Velcade.
However, even if Velcade is approved for patients with multiple myeloma who have failed on other drugs, Millennium won't be out of the woods.
Warrell says that Erbitux's troubles validate his more conservative approach to testing Genta's Genasense drug, now in final-stage testing for melanoma, lymphoma and multiple myeloma.
"We've got three great new drugs for multiple myeloma, " he says.
"It's well established in multiple myeloma that survival and response rates have a statistical correlation, " says Barry Greene , general manager of oncology at Millennium.
For the treatment of multiple myeloma, Velcade's results have been impressive.
Giusti founded an advocacy group, the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, that works with companies like Novartis, Celgene, and Merck to develop new treatments.
One possibility is that one sales force will market products to doctors who specialize in MDS, and a second will market products that treat multiple myeloma.
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