This page includes links to other sites.
My writings are in black. Plagiarized text is in maroon, sometimes highlighted by me in red.
Go Home.
Links by category
. . . Angiogenesis and cancer
. . . Various
Go up to Page contents for Science.
Links: Angiogenesis and cancer
Angiogenesis and Cancer Control: From Concept to Therapeutic Trial: http://www.moffitt.usf.edu/pubs/ccj/v6n5/article2.htm Steven Brem, MD. Background: There is extraordinary interest in developing angiosuppressive agents for cancer treatment. Several new agents appear promising for the treatment of a variety of human cancers. Current concepts and new agents in clinical trials are the focus of this article. In particular, the introduction of a new treatment for human brain tumors is presented in detail, using an antiangiogenic agent, penicillamine, and depletion of an obligatory cofactor of angiogenesis, copper.
Judah Folkman introduced a sweeping hypothesis in 1971 . . . Antiangiogenic therapy is a high priority for the NCI, especially in the wake of the description of angiostatin and endostatin. . . .
Endostatin is a 20kDa C-terminal fragment of collagen XVIII discovered by O’Reilly et al.5 Zinc-binding of endostatin is essential for its antiangiogenic activity.66 Endostatin specifically inhibits endothelial proliferation and potently inhibits angiogenesis and tumor growth. Primary tumors regress to dormant microscopic lesions. . . .
Angiostatin is a 38 kDa circulating, endogenous, antiangiogenic and antimetastatic protein.4,69,70 Angiostatin binds ATP synthase on the surface of human endothelial cells,71 induces apoptosis in endothelial cells72,73 and tumor cells,74 and inhibits endothelial cell migration and tubule formation, but it does not affect growth-factor-induced signal transduction.73 Furthermore, it activates the focal adhesion kinase, suggesting that it subverts the formation of endothelial cells adhesion plaques . . .
Copper and Angiogenesis: In an attempt to McAuslan isolate a peptide, endothelial stimulating growth factor, McAuslan and Reilly116 noted a high concentration of copper salts. They postulated that copper was the "active principal" in angiogenesis. Copper, but not other trace metals, stimulated the directional migration of endothelial cells. More recently, copper was found to stimulate directly the in vitro proliferation of endothelial cells . . .
Copper and Cancer: Copper metabolism is profoundly altered in neoplastic development in human cancer and in tumor-bearing animals.120,121 . . .
185 papers cited in footnotes, including several by Folkman.
New England Journal of Medicine On-line -- Home Page: http://www.nejm.org/content/index.asp. Its Search MEDLINE facility yielded the following: (a) 505 hits for "Folkman"; (b) 26 hits for "Folkman, J."; and 302 hits for "Folkman J". Moral? Ask not only the right question, but ask it the right way!
http--www.boston-neurosurg.org-publications-ar98v8f.pdf: http://www.boston-neurosurg.org/publications/ar98v8f.pdf In collaboration with Drs. Judah meningiomas we observed that these ... of angio- statin, as well as endostatin. . . .
Judah Folkman Inventing the Future: http://www.biospace.com/articles/010600_Judah.cfm
Consider how biotechnology might have shaped the year 2030, Judah Folkman quotes Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Studying how cancer grew early in his career, nearly 40 years ago, Folkman developed the notion of angiogenesis: In order to grow and spread beyond a small mass, he posited that blood vessels were needed to nourish a tumor and metastases. If there were no blood vessels, cancer would remain small and unthreatening.
Looking at the same thing others had before, he saw something different, and in this way, invented the now-booming field of angiogenesis research. It took decades for Folkman's ideas to be taken seriously, . . .
Scientific American Article Fighting Cancer by Attacking its Blood Supply 9-96: http://www.sciam.com/0996issue/0996folkman.html By interfering with the expanding network of blood vessels in tumors, researchers hope to cut off the underlying support system. By Judah Folkman. . . .
U.S. News 12-9-96 A ``ridiculous theory revolutionizes cancer treatment: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/9angio.htm They called his theory ridiculous. Now it's revolutionizing cancer treatment.
Every few years, Dr. Judah Folkman delivers a lecture to Harvard medical students on the difference between obstinacy and persistence. "It's a fine line," he says. "If your idea succeeds, everybody says you're persistent. If it doesn't succeed, you're obstinate." Folkman should know. He has endured the ridicule of critics, . . . But the surgeon and cell biologist at Children's Hospital in Boston has never wavered from the deceptively simple-sounding theory he first outlined 25 years ago, a theory that is having profound implications for the treatment of cancer: Tumors need a blood supply in order to grow.
As it turns out, Folkman is likely to go down in history as persistent, not merely pigheaded. Over the past decade, the scientist not only has proved his basic premise but in the process has opened a portal on some of cancer's most perplexing secrets. Researchers now understand, for example, that tumors use tricks to induce nearby blood vessels into providing that blood supply by sprouting tiny branches called capillaries. The tumor then uses these capillaries as highways to spread--or metastasize--to far-flung sites in the body.
Now, Folkman's lab has produced the most spectacular finding yet: two substances that can cut off a tumor's blood supply, stopping cancer in its tracks. If these drugs work in people as well as they do in mice, they could reverse the deadly odds cancer patients face once their tumors have spread.
Folkman's idea rests on the observation that once a tumor grows beyond a few hundred thousand cells--a mass no bigger than a BB--the cells at its center don't get enough blood. To nourish them, the tumor must send out chemical signals that induce capillaries to grow--a process known as angiogenesis, from the Greek angos, for vessel.
Finding the switch. Folkman's theory led him to search for biochemical messengers that tumors use to turn on blood vessel cells. In 1983, his lab found the first of these angiogenesis growth factors. Two years later, his team fished out another substance: This one turned off blood vessel cells, slowing the growth of capillaries and--Folkman hoped--some tumors as well.
Recently, Folkman's lab isolated two new factors, called angiostatin and endostatin, which are the most powerful growth inhibitors by far. They also hold out the promise of an entirely new means of battling cancer. Unlike chemotherapy, which can make patients quite ill at high doses, the new factors produce only the mildest of side effects . . .
Cutting Supply Lines: http://www.riverdeep.net/riverdeep_today/news_2000/june/front.190600.cancer.html The way in which cancerous tumors create new blood vessels around themselves—a process called angiogenesis—enables the tumors to grow and the cancer to spread. How to cut off these supply lines, with what are called "antiangiogentic drugs" or "angiogenesis inhibitors," has become a primary goal of cancer research. Medical researchers are confident that this new generation of drugs may stop cancers in areas such as the breasts, colon, and lungs. . . . Dr. Judah Folkman, of Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, has pioneered this approach for the past 25 years.
cancerTrials Antiangiogenesis Inhibitors in Clinical Trials: http://cancertrials.nci.nih.gov/news/angio/table.html Angiogenesis Inhibitors in Clinical Trials. . . . an overview of some of the current trials of anti-angiogenesis agents. It is not a comprehensive summary of all of the clinical trials ongoing with drugs that inhibit angiogenesis. . . . More information can be obtained from the NCI clinical trials database online, where all these studies are listed, . . . Drugs that inhibit endothelial cells directly: Thalidomide, Squalamine, Endostatin. . . . and more types and drugs . . .
Angiogenesis Foundation: http://www.angio.org/ Central source of info., etc.
Abbott Labs Files Lawsuit Against Cancer Researcher - HealthcareMedia.com: http://www.healthcaremedia.com/archive/showarch.cfm/642 . . . The suit alleges that Folkman fraudulently told a US patent protection office that he discovered the tumor inhibiting properties in a small section of an angiostatin protein known as Kringle 5. . . .
New England Journal of Medicine On-line -- Home Page: http://www.nejm.org/content/index.asp Yields following papers or correspondence via search for author Folkman:
. . . Correspondence -- NEJM 1996; 334 920-921: http://www.nejm.org/content/1996/0334/0014/0920.asp Angiogenesis and Tumor Growth. The New England Journal of Medicine -- April 4, 1996 -- Vol. 334, No. 14.
. . . Correspondence -- NEJM 1995; 333 595-596: http://www.nejm.org/content/1995/0333/0009/0595.asp Additional Corrections: Interferon for Hemangiomas of Infancy. The New England Journal of Medicine -- August 31, 1995 -- Vol. 333, No. 9.
Endostatin main: http://www.bidmc.caregroup.org/endostatin/default.asp The Endostatin™ Clinical Trial. This study represents the first time that recombinant human Endostatin™ (rhEndostatin) has been tested in people. It is a Phase I trial, meaning that it is being conducted to study the medication’s safety and the dose at which it should be given. This is a "dose escalation" study . . .
Click on the following for addtional links relative to the above, but with emphasis on the application of fractal geometry: Special Project Angiogenesis -- Cancer.
Go Home. Go up to Page contents for Science.
You can e-mail me at waynerp@sympatico.ca