A daily pill closed leukemia's gap with everyone else

The disease comes from a single genetic accident, a fused gene called BCR-ABL that drives white blood cells to multiply without control. A drug designed to block that one protein reached clinics in 2001.

Researchers at the Karolinska Institute followed 2,662 Swedish patients diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia between 1973 and 2013. Among those diagnosed in the imatinib era, ten year overall survival reached about 83 percent, and patients diagnosed in 2013 were projected to lose fewer than three years of life expectancy to the disease.

Before imatinib, median survival after diagnosis ran three to six years and the disease was usually fatal. The drug turned a cancer that killed most patients into a chronic condition managed with a daily tablet, and newer tyrosine kinase inhibitors have pushed outcomes further still. Some patients in long remission are now being studied for whether treatment can be stopped altogether.

One pill, nearly a normal lifespan.