Celebrating Gleevec � and Basic Research

When 23-year-old Glamour magazine editor Erin Zammett Ruddy went for a routine physical in November 2001, she expected reassurance that her healthy lifestyle had been keeping her well. After all, she felt great. What she got, a few days later, was a shock. Instead of having 4,000 to 10,000 white blood cells per milliliter of blood, she had more than 10 times that number � and many of the cells were cancerous.

Erin had chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Two years before her diagnosis, CML was a death sentence. But the drug Gleevec saved her and many others. It offers perhaps the best example of translational medicine.