Chalk up another success for the wonder-drug Gleevec. 

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Developed in part by Oregon Health & Science University researcher Dr. Brian Druker, Gleevec first helped improve survival rates for people with a certain kind of leukemia known as CML.

Now, OHSU says it looks like Gleevec is helping prevent a recurrence of a different kind of cancer of the gastrointestinal tracts known as GIST – so much so that researchers halted a drug trial early because it wasn’t ethical to keep giving half of the group a placebo when Gleevec clearly worked so well.

Here’s how this works: people with GIST who had surgery to remove a tumor or tumors very frequently faced the cancer’s return.  But, in the study of more than 700 people, 97% of those who got Gleevec after surgery were cancer-free after a year, compared to only 83% of those on a placebo.

"This is a major breakthrough that will change the way this type of cancer is treated," said Dr. Charles Blanke, an oncologist and researcher at the OHSU Cancer Institute who worked on the study.

The National Institutes of Health sponsored the research.  OHSU was one of the largest testing centers.  The hospital enrolled 28 patients.

GIST affects about 5,000 to 10,000 people in the U.S. every year.  GIST tumors along the gastrointestinal tract are prone to spread to other organs and are usually unresponsive to conventional treatments like chemotherapy or radiation.