Source: forbes.com Author: Thomas Stossel This year's Lasker Foundation annual prize for medical breakthroughs--the American version of the Nobel Prize--recognizes a breakthrough cancer treatment that has revolutionized chemotherapy, a "targeted therapy for chronic myelogenous leukemia." But more symbolic--and no doubt controversial--was to whom the prize was awarded: two academic scientists and a former drug company employee. Ironically, the treatment probably shouldn't exist. Only 3,000 chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) patients are diagnosed in the U.S. every year, a population usually thought too small to justify the hundreds of millions of dollars that companies must spend to develop new medicines. That the therapy exists at all is a testament to the dedication of our research community and the vital collaboration between academic and commercial scientists. The Lasker prize for CML is viewed as the first practical payoff from decades of research attempting to understand why some cells deviate from their normal programming to become life-threatening cancer. It has long been known that cancer cells multiply and spread wildly to destroy healthy tissues. The research that led to the new treatment revealed that in cancer cells a component of the signaling system controlling cell behavior performs autonomously, like a traffic light permanently set on green, instructing cells to multiply and uncontrollably invade nearby tissues. Researchers speculated that by shutting down the abnormal signals (switching the light from green to red) cancer cells, lacking the key signal to multiply, would behave normally. This approach is a radical departure from 50 years of cancer treatment [...]