# Brian Druker

Source: https://onco.cc/people/brian-druker/  
OnCo record `brian-druker` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

He pushed a shelved kinase inhibitor through the laboratory and into a 1998 trial when few believed a targeted pill could work. Imatinib made chronic myeloid leukaemia a disease people live with, and became the model for targeted therapy.

## Summary

Brian Druker trained at Dana-Farber, where he developed the antibody used to measure tyrosine phosphorylation, and moved to Oregon Health & Science University in 1993 to find a treatment for chronic myeloid leukaemia, whose BCR-ABL kinase had been defined by Janet Rowley's translocation and Owen Witte's biochemistry. He persuaded Ciba-Geigy, later Novartis, to let him test their compounds, showed that STI571 killed CML cells while sparing normal ones, and argued the company into a phase 1 trial that opened in June 1998 with Bud Romine as its first patient. Nearly all patients at effective doses achieved normal blood counts, and the FDA approved imatinib in May 2001. Ten-year survival in chronic-phase CML is now above 80 percent, and the drug established the template of matching an inhibitor to a driver mutation. He directs the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute and received the Lasker Award in 2009.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-09
- Tags: hero; pioneer
- Role: Physician-scientist who brought imatinib to patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia
- Specialisms: Chronic myeloid leukaemia; Kinase inhibitors; Targeted therapy

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Druker
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Druker
- OHSU Knight Cancer Institute: https://www.ohsu.edu/knight-cancer-institute

## Connected records

- cancers: [Chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML)](https://onco.cc/cancers/cml/)
- fronts: [Targeted Therapy](https://onco.cc/fronts/targeted-therapy/)
- technologies: [Small-molecule kinase inhibitors](https://onco.cc/technologies/kinase-inhibitors/)
- targets: [BCR::ABL1 (Philadelphia chromosome)](https://onco.cc/targets/bcr-abl/)
- drugs: [Imatinib](https://onco.cc/drugs/imatinib/)
- institutions: [OHSU Knight Cancer Institute](https://onco.cc/institutions/ohsu-knight/)
- terms: [Oncogene addiction](https://onco.cc/terms/oncogene-addiction/)
- people: [Bud Romine](https://onco.cc/people/bud-romine/), [Charles L. Sawyers](https://onco.cc/people/charles-sawyers/), [Gert Boyle](https://onco.cc/people/gert-boyle/), [Janet Rowley](https://onco.cc/people/janet-rowley/), [Owen N. Witte](https://onco.cc/people/owen-witte/), [Phil Knight](https://onco.cc/people/phil-knight/)
- bottlenecks: [Incentives reward me-too drugs and marginal gains](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-incentive-misalignment/), [The valley of death between lab and product](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-translational-valley/)
- trials: [Beat AML Master Trial](https://onco.cc/trials/beat-aml-master-trial/)

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