This looks promising: Merck announced results from a new drug (Revlimid) targeted for MDS, a bone marrow neoplasia syndrome which strikes mostly older patients. It's somewhat like leukemia apparently (MDS reviewed here) . Basically it's a group of syndromes in which there are not enough normal healthy bone marrow cells to repopulate the blood system. Cells in the bone marrow are stem cells that regenerate differentiated blood cells; these differentiated blood cells only last a few months in teh blood stream.

Anyway, what is remarkable to me is that a huge number of patients had 'deep remission' of the disease (60-70%) from a drug that was only expected to treat symptoms. I haven't looked into the study design or marker enough to understand it much, but it seems like the genetic marker for the disease was significantly afffected in remitant patients; in other words it seems like the drug specifically killed the unhealthy stem cells, which could give rise to full-blown leukemia. (AML). Anyway, good news and we need more of the sort.

It's funny how only a small fraction of big pharma's income is from cancer drugs (10%?), but so much research and so many drugs are available.

I'm noticing alot of 'good news' stories for big pharma lately, which is good because I want a job in the industry when i graduate soon.