A leukemia drug may help patients to treat strokes in a more effective and safer way, U.S. and Swedish researchers now say. The researchers used the leukemia drug known as imatinib (Gleevec) in mice and found that it greatly reduced bleeding, even if tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) wasn't given until five hours after a stroke began.

A tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), which works by dissolving clots and is the immediate treatment for common kind of strokes. The drug tPA however cause dangerous bleeding in the brain and its brain-saving power fades fast after the third hour of a stroke

A successful cancer-fighting drug may also damage the heart, although a researcher says leukemia patients who need Gleevec should not abandon it.

While effectively treating cancer, Gleevec can lead to heart failure in some patients, said Dr. Thomas Force, who teaches medicine at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

His study, published Sunday in the on line edition of the journal Nature Medicine, was prompted by reports that 10 patients taking Gleevec for chronic myelogenous leukemia developed severe congestive heart failure

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new drug to treat chronic myeloid leukemia (CML).

The FDA granted accelerated approval Wednesday to Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s drug, Sprycel (dasatinib), as an oral inhibitor of multiple tyrosine kinases, for the treatment of adults in all phases of CML, if they have shown resistance or intolerance to prior therapy

According to a study conducted by U.S. researchers, Glivec (imatinib), a potential cancer drug, can interfere with bone development.

Results of the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine indicated that the drug inhibits bone formation and resorption, a process known as bone remodeling, says Reuters