What About the Drug?

ERBITUX

Back in 1983, when Dr. John Mendelsohn applied for a National Cancer Institute grant to study growth-factor receptors in tumors, he was flatly rejected. His idea--to create antibodies that would find and bind to tumor cells, blocking their ability to recruit the nutrients they need to flourish--was considered unproved and risky. "He had a vision going way back that antibodies might have an important role in the treatment of cancer," says Dr. Stuart Kornfeld, one of Mendelsohn's mentors at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.

Twenty years later, Mendelsohn is president of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and his cancer-fighting...

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