Cure cancer with antiangiogenisis. Dr. Li

Angiogenesis inhibition does sound good on paper, but in practice the concept has not worked out well.  I first recall hearing about angiogenesis inhibitors back when the book Sharks Don't Get Cancer came out.  Actually sharks do get cancer so the book title was rather misleading.  But the work done with shark cartilage and its promotion was soon followed by the pharmaceutical companies jumping on the idea and looking for their own angiogenesis inhibitors (AIs).  They started with bovine cartilage, which like all cartilages contain angiogenesis inhibitors.  Later they discovered an angiogenesis inhibitor in of all places rat urine, which I think is closely related to beer.  Anyway, NOVA did a program on this following the discovery and development of the drug.  One of the men undergoing the therapy died early on.  At the end of the program they put a note that the second man was dropped from the study because his "tumor grew beyond the parameters of the study".  In other words the drug failed but they did not want the drug to appear as a failure so they were dropping anyone who died or did not respond to the drug from the study to make the drug appear effective.  Actually this is a common tactic used to get chemotherapy drugs approved as was reported in the medical journal JAMA a while back.

Actually, if you listen to the video carefully about the tests on dogs they only talk about extending survival rates in the dogs, not curing them.

There are actually several things in the video I disagreed with and some important facts that he left out such as the role of the angiogenesis inhibitors actually produced by primary tumors.

I have already written about this in depth in the book I am writing on cancer right now.   But as I pointed out there is much being left out.  And I would not rely solely on angiogenesis inhibitors as a means to cure cancer.  In fact, we also have to keep in mind that not all cancers are dependent on angiogenesis in the first place, such as leukemias.

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