Lasker~DeBakey
Clinical Medical Research Award

Acceptance remarks by Brian Druker

I would like to thank the Lasker Foundation for this prestigious honor.

I began my career in cancer research nearly 25 years ago with a dream of finding better cancer treatments. I believed the future was targeted therapies where we'd kill cancer cells without harming normal cells. To do this, I believed, we needed to figure out what was triggering the growth of cancer cells and fix it. At the time, this vision was not shared by many.

But I was fortunate, I found a collaborator, Nick Lydon who shared my vision. The project faced many hurdles including convincing the drug company, Novartis to go to clinical trials. I wasn't just a researcher, isolated in my lab, I was a doctor and I had patients who desperately needed this drug to live. In 1998, we started the clinical trials with this once a day pill and within 6 months every single one of our patients had their blood counts return to normal. It has been over 10 years and today patients who once had a life expectancy of 3 to 5 years, are now expected to live 30 years. With Gleevec we've turned a fatal cancer into a manageable disease.

One of the best rewards of my job is every week I get to see patients who are thriving because of our work. I get to hear their stories, hear about their children and grandchildren. And I am privileged to have one of my patients here from Oregon today.

I was giving a talk recently and a woman, battling colon cancer, asked me when are we going to have a Gleevec for her cancer? I gave her a typical stilted researcher answer and told her about the 30 or more years of research that went into developing Gleevec. I went on to say that I was confident that someday we would have a Gleevec for colon cancer, but that we have to be patient. Later my wife reminded me that cancer patients don't have the luxury of patience. As always, my wife is right. If I had been patient I would not be standing here today. And while I — like those of you here today — want to savor the success of Gleevec, I also believe that we can't be patient.

There is urgency to the work we do. Mary Lasker understood that urgency. She was a tireless advocate for cancer research. And I am so honored to receive this award that bears her name.

We live in a time of great promise. There are incredible opportunities in cancer research. What Gleevec tells us is that by understanding cancer we can develop effective treatments. Gleevec tells us we are on the right track but we can't be complacent. We can't be patient. We must seize this momentum to reach the finish line of curing cancer. Thank you for this great honor.