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Biotech / Medical : Imclone systems (IMCL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dr. Seuss who wrote (898)	7/15/1999 12:02:00 PM
From: JEB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2515

zdii.com July 14, 1999 7:19pm Blocking blood vessels helps radiotherapy -study Reuters WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) - Experimental new drugs that literally starve out tumors can give a big boost to standard radiotherapy, researchers reported on Wednesday. The report adds to growing hope that such drugs, known as angiogenesis inhibitors, can boost the cocktail of approaches now used to treat cancer. Dr. Ralph Weichselbaum and colleagues at the University of Chicago and Harvard University had already used angiostatin and endostatin, two natural body proteins being developed as drugs by Maryland-based Entremed Inc. <ENMD.O>, to boost radiotherapy. Writing in the journal Cancer Research, they said they tried a third drug that attacks angiogenesis, called anti-VEGF. "Despite all the media attention devoted to angiostatin and similar agents, most scientists suspect it's unlikely that, by themselves, these new drugs will have a very dramatic effect on most types of cancer," Weichselbaum said in a statement. "But we have long been certain that radiation therapy works quite well for eradicating relatively small human tumors," he added. "Now we have good reasons to believe that combining radiation with angiogenesis inhibitors can make this well-established treatment significantly more effective, perhaps even against comparatively large tumors, with very little added toxicity." Several drugs that affect the growth of blood vessels, a process known as angiogenesis, are being tested against cancer. Many attack one of the compounds that starts this growth, known as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Weichselbaum's team found that tumors produce three to six times more VEGF after they are exposed to radiation. The higher levels last for up to two weeks. It seems the tumors are sprouting new blood vessels to help them recover from the damage done by the radiation therapy. Working in mice, they compared the results of using an anti-VEGF compound, radiation alone, or anti-VEGF plus radiation. The combination worked better than either approach alone in four kinds of tumors -- Lewis lung carcinoma, human squamous cell carcinoma, human esophageal adenocarcinoma and a glioblastoma, which is a kind of brain tumor. "The antitumor effects were greater than additive," the researchers wrote. Even a little anti-VEGF greatly boosted the effects of radiation, they said. "The combination of anti-VEGF and radiation therapy was much more effective than we might have expected," Weichselbaum said. The researchers used an antibody made by R&D Systems of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Several biotechnology companies have drugs or antibodies in the clinical pipeline that work against VEGF, including Genentech <GNE.N>, Agouron <WLA.N., ImClone Systems Inc. <IMCL.O> and Sugen Inc. <SUGN.O>. Other anti-angiogenesis drugs being developed attack angiogenesis in different ways.