nicholas lydon and dr. charles sawyers of the sloan-kettering cancer center. they're all here in new york to receive the prestige lasker award. it is one of the highest honors in all of medicine, and i'm appropriately thankful that they come to this table to talk about the implications of what they have learned and what they have done. welcome. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> charlie: tell me about what is significant about gleevec. >> what gleevec is done it's taken chronic myeloid leukemia with a life expectancy of three to five years and turned it into a manageable disease with a life expectancy which we assume will be normal. and it's done that because we understood precisely what drove the gloat of that leukemia and we developed a drug to shut down that abnormality, kill the cancer cells without harming normal cells. by doing that we generated an effective non-toxic pill that people take once a day that turns their cancer into a manageable condition. for the future, we need to develop many more drugs. we already have dozens of drugs like gleevec on the mar