Cancer Treatment Options Forum - February 2nd, 2010 - 4 Comments
If Drs. could find a way to disrupt angiogenisis would they be able to develop a cure for cancer?
Cancer has to have a blood supply to be able to grow and survive, I have been wondering if Drs could find a way to disrupt the process by which it establishes a blood supply that a cure could be developed.
This is one of the ways researchers are trying to stop cancer spread.
But your entire body needs blood supply and if you cut yourself you body needs to grow vessels to heal that area!
So you can’t just stop all blood vessel growth – you would die!
They are trying to make it only specific to cancer growths, and that is very difficult.
There are already medications on the market which inhibit angiogenesis. One well known drug is called Avastin.
Here is more info on angiogenesis for the treatment of cancer:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Therapy/angiogenesis-inhibitors
Cancer is a symptom of negative lifestyle choices and cellular irregularities not an issue of blood supply…
I normally don’t participate in chats, but I was searching for an article and came across this blog and saw the comments and had to put my two cents in. I am a molecular biologist working for a small drug development company and the mechanism of action of one of our pre-clinical compounds is angiogenesis inhibition. Xchris is somewhat misinformed in his / her comment. Cancer is very much related to blood supply. Cancer cells require blood supply for nutrients just like all of the cells in the body. A larger issue then presents itself because of the very nature of cancer. At the most basic level, cancer is simply cellular growth gone wrong- completely out of control. This is called proliferation. In the simplest terms, cancer can be caused by any number of things- far too many to list here. So we’ll just agree that it starts by mechanism XYZ. The cells then multiply unchecked, giving rise to tumors. As they proliferate, the cancer cells send out signals to promote angiogenesis- the formation of blood vessels- and the cancer thrives. Because of the extreme proliferation and overgrowth, they require more and more blood supply. It’s a circular exponential equation- the more the cells grow and divide, the more nutrients they require, and the more nutrients they have available, the more they will grow and divide. So the growth of cancer is very much related to blood supply on the most fundamental of levels. Angiogenesis inhibitors suppress the development of blood vessels to prevent the cancer cells from indefinite growth. If you cut off the blood and nutrient supply, you effectively starve the tumor. The key is that you want it to be specific, so there are several drugs in development that bind to certain growth factors, inhibiting angiogenesis; the compound that I and my colleagues are working on happens to be one.