In 1997 more than one million people will develop some type of cancer in the United States. Approximately 500,000 will be cured or in a state of remission. These numbers represent an improving cure rate seen over the past decade which is largely due to earlier detection, better treatment and advances in chemotherapy. In particular, the advances in chemotherapy include targeted or specific drug therapy in which a drug is developed specifically for the treatment of a certain cancer type. This “disease-oriented” approach is designed to identify compounds which exert selective effects in vitro on particular tumor types and to follow-up these leads in vivo utilizing cell lines, (Fiebig et al., Cancer Treatment Reviews 17:109–117 (1990)). However, the incidence of cancer is continuing to climb as our population ages and as new cancers develop or occur more frequently, such as in patients infected with AIDS virus. Thus, it is clear that there is a tremendous demand for additional regimens to treat patients with cancer.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds