Word: newer
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...That new perspective provided fertile ground for the growth of new classes of cancer therapies. While older drugs were like heavy artillery - obliterating cancer cells but causing lots of collateral damage - newer drugs are more like smart bombs. Some of them target communication signals within malignant cells, some cut off supply lines by interfering with the growth of blood vessels around a tumor, and others block the chemical agents that enable tumors to expand into new territory. These more targeted therapies tend to focus on frantically proliferating cancer cells while leaving healthy cells intact...
...Many newer drugs target other pathways for tumor growth. Herceptin, introduced in 1998, interferes with a protein called epidermal growth factor by blocking the her2 receptor, a binding site that is found on the surface of many cells but is overabundant in about 25% of breast cancers. Other smart drugs interfere with the same growth factor, using slightly different chemical strategies to do so, and some have proved useful in a range of cancers. Gleevec, for example, which was approved in 2001, prevents growth factors from attaching to cancer cells and activating an enzyme called tyrosine kinase, which regulates cell...
...cancer cells, including the way they spur the formation of blood vessels, which nourish their growth. Avastin, approved in 2004, is the first drug to throw a wrench into the process by suppressing a tumor's ability to recruit vascular growth factors. As with many of the newer therapies, doctors have found that it works best as part of a cocktail of cancer drugs...
...Newer additions to this growing arsenal are being developed at such a clip that "it's fun to be an oncologist right now," says Hayes, though he's worried about sharp cuts in federal research spending. Hayes remembers wincing a bit 25 years ago when patients wistfully hoped that "something new will come along" to save them. "Now there's something new coming down the pike all the time," he says. In fact, an alternative to Herceptin was approved this month, giving doctors something to try when Herceptin stops working...
...Still, Berkley and others say that the wider range of drug options can only help vaccine makers, giving them a larger well of knowledge upon which they can draw. Yet, even as newer classes of ARVs arrive, drugs cannot be the only answer to AIDS. Already, says Dr. Roy Steigbigel of State University of New York at Stony Brook, and one of the leading investigators of Merck's isentress, volunteers have begun to develop resistance to the integrase inhibitor - a drug that hasn't even yet been approved...