Edited by: Eugene Russo
| Editor's Note: It's an excellent example of how good medicine often relies on the most fundamental, though seemingly obscure, details of hard-core basic research: In March 1996, a laboratory from the University of Rochester announced the discovery of an enzyme integral to unlocking the still-mysterious intricacies of DNA transcription and gene activation, the most basic of cellular processes. A month later, a laboratory at Harvard University, acting completely independently, reported the discovery of a second key enzyme that seemed to have an equally important but opposite effect. Three months ago, researchers from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center reported that they'd treated a 13-year-old girl suffering from acute promyelocytic leukemia with a novel therapy based on the inhibition of one of these enzymes. Within 23 days, the treatment had triggered an almost complete remission of her cancer, a cancer that had been unresponsive to numerous other treatments.... |
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