bob, ASCO kicked off with a warning about magic bullets:
U.S. cancer group says report of cure unrealistic
By Mark Egan
LOS ANGELES, May 16 (Reuters) - A leading cancer group said on Saturday it was unrealistic to expect that new anti-angiogenesis drugs would cure cancer in humans within two years.
Anti-angiogenesis drugs, which inhibit tumors by starving them of their blood supply, have been front-page news this month because of reports the drugs angiostatin and endostatin cure cancer in mice.
''I think these are very hopeful signs but to think of a total cure in two years from one particular compound is perhaps overstatement,'' Dr. Robert Mayer, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, told reporters in Los Angeles.
''Recent comments were perhaps hyperbole. These drugs and new approaches ... are novel ways of treating the cancer cell but I don't think any investigator thinks of them as a substitute for what we have now,'' he said.
Mayer was apparently referring to a New York Times report on May 3 that quoted Nobel laureate James Watson as predicting cancer could be cured within two years in the wake of progress with the drugs developed by the biotech company EntreMed Inc.
The front-page article spurred an explosion of interest in EntreMed and the drugs angiostatin and endostatin and helped boost its shares by some 500 percent the next day. Watson, a co-discoverer of the ''double helix'' structure of DNA, disputed the quotation that the New York Times published.
The two drugs are naturally occurring proteins that block growth of blood vessels that feed tumors. They were discovered by Dr. Judah Folkman, a cancer researcher at Children's Hospital in Boston, and licensed to EntreMed.
In the May 3 New York Times article Watson was quoted as saying: ''Judah is going to cure cancer in two years.''
Mayer said the drugs may advance cancer treatment when used in conjunction with existing therapies such as chemotherapy.
Mayer was attending the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting at which 20,000 doctors will discuss new approaches to treat cancer, second only to heart attacks as a cause of death in the United States.
Half of those diagnosed with cancer do not survive. About 1.2 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer this year with about 565,000 expected to die of the disease in 1998.
Dr. Allen Lichter, president-elect of ASCO, agreed that anti-angiostatin drugs were not a miracle cure for cancer.
''The idea that there is a single pathway in every cancer and if you just fix that one pathway you will cure all cancer is fanciful and experience tells us that is unrealistic,'' Lichter said.
''I think anti-agiogenesis will be another important arrow in our quiver. We will attack cancer with it but the concept that this will lead to one final (cure) is just not realistic.''
He said the key to curing cancer is increased funding for clinical trials, which he said were critically under funded.
''Clinical research is much like planting seeds, we put them in the ground and we water them and they bear fruit,'' he said. REUTERS
16:57 05-16-98
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