Starving cancer into submission EntreMed, Inc.
✍ Scribed by William A. Wells
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 335 KB
- Volume
- 5
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1074-5521
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Cut off a tumor's blood supply -it's source of nutrients and growth factors -and the tumor should perish. EntreMed, Inc., of Rockville, Maryland, is one of many companies trying to put this simple theory of anti-angiogenesis into practice. By licensing anti-angiogenic molecules discovered by Judah Folkman (Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts), EntreMed has acquired perhaps the hottest intellectual property in cancer research today, and become the consummate middle-man. The company does the pre-clinical grunt-work for which Folkman does not have the time or resources, and provides the big pharmaceutical companies with drug candidates they cannot resist. lkenty five years in the wilderness Attacking angiogenesis, the process by which blood vessels sprout and invade new areas, was not always so popular. "When Folkman first proposed attacking cancer by inhibiting angiogenesis he was quite alone," says Robert Auerbach (University of Madison, Wisconsin). "He recognized the importance of it and made it a real research goal. In that sense he's a real pioneer."
Folkman first put forth his thesis in a 1971 article in the Neon, England Journal of Mea'icine. If angiogenesis is not switched on, said Folkman, a tumor will grow to be only the size of a pea. This state is maintained by balanced proliferation and cell death, until a combination of hypoxia, inactivation of tumor suppressor genes, and activation of tumor William A. Wells,