Gleevec (targeted cancer therapy)

Chronic myeloid leukaemia was fatal within a few years, and chemotherapy attacked the patient almost as hard as the cancer. Brian Druker argued that a drug could instead be aimed at the single faulty enzyme that drives this leukaemia and leave healthy cells alone; the pharmaceutical industry thought the market too small to bother. He pushed the compound into trials anyway, and in 1998 patients who had been dying went into remission. Approved in 2001, Gleevec turned the disease into one people live with, and it proved the whole principle of targeted therapy on which modern oncology now runs.

Part of “The Gifts of the Jews” — verified Jewish contributions to the world, with sources.