Word: folkman
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Virtually alone in the scientific community, Folkman decided it would be easier to try to kill a tumor by destroying its blood supply than by attacking it directly. His reasoning was sound. Tumors are made up of rapidly dividing mutant cells that adapt quickly to almost any treatment thrown at them. Blood vessels, by contrast, are made up of normal cells that grow much more slowly and are nowhere near as difficult to outwit. Hoping to starve tumors through their supply line of nutrients, Folkman set out to find a drug that could block the construction of new blood vessels...
...first, he was almost too successful. Everywhere he looked--from cartilage to fungi to the notorious sedative thalidomide--Folkman found one compound after another that exhibited anti-angiogenic properties. But none of them was as effective as he wanted it to be. Then he remembered something that surgeons had often observed: that taking out one big tumor from a patient seems to trigger the growth of lots of smaller ones. Could it be that tumors secrete a substance that inhibits the growth of rival tumors' blood vessels...
...such a crazy idea that none of the researchers in Folkman's lab wanted anything to do with it. Finally one of them, Dr. Michael O'Reilly, agreed to take on the project. Together he and Folkman eventually determined that various segments of a naturally occurring protein called plasminogen seemed to do the trick. They called the collection of molecular fragments angiostatin and found that each version of the compound differed slightly in its ability to stop a tumor from growing...
...matter what its configuration, angiostatin could not make a mouse tumor disappear. Not, that is, until Folkman and O'Reilly added to the mix a second molecular fragment, which they called endostatin, from yet another naturally occurring protein. Together, the two compounds destroyed a range of tumors in mice. The results were startling enough that they merited testing in people--which is exactly what Pluda, at the National Cancer Institute, intends to do. How fast those studies can begin depends on how much angiostatin and endostatin EntreMed and its business partner, Bristol-Myers Squibb, can produce and whether they...
...least Folkman doesn't have to spend all his time nowadays, as he once did, trying to persuade researchers that his approach to cancer treatment has merit. Scientists are currently investigating 300 different substances for their potential to block angiogenesis. Twenty of those compounds have already entered clinical trials in humans. Indeed, researchers suspect that some of the latest cancer treatments, like tamoxifen, may themselves work in part by blocking the growth of newly formed blood vessels...