I am intrigued by the research of this... Like many of you, I have many friends who are either currently or have gone through cancer treatment.. Radiation and chemo.. Many times, the drugs they use have some of the same base elements the military used in the mustard gases for the war in Vietnam. Ultra poisonous stuff that there are side effects.
About 10 years ago, I was intrigued by a special I watched in the area of cancer cure called ANGIOGENESIS INHIBITORS. The definition is in the etymology of the words itself, like most medical terminology.. ANGIO(blood vessel); GENESIS(beginning); inhibitors(prevention from). Put it together and it is the prevention of the beginning of blood vessels.. It was started by an ultra talented doctor originally from Ohio but ended his career at Harvard as a distinguished professor, Dr. Judah Folkman.. If you want to read a tremendously interesting story, read about this guy. He has inspired some of the best cancer researchers in the world today.. I was a few months from going to see one of his lectures as a representative of some friends who struggled with cancer. He died in the Denver airport on the way to a lecture in Seattle, 8 years ago.. A very sad day for me.
The idea, in a nutshell, is to promote factors the body already has, to prevent tumors from growing or metastasizing through the recruitment of blood vessels. Simply, when a tumor starts, it is a living organism that recruits blood vessels from the body to feed the tumor.. Not only that, but as pathways to change location in the body and start new colonies of tumors(metastasis). The body produces growth factors that actually protect the tumor as it grows, so that is the reason you want to catch it early. The body also has things that PREVENT the body from having cancerous tumors.. The truth is ALL of us have cancerous cells that normally divide and die, on a daily basis.. For the ones that stick, we call it "HAVING CANCER". They recruit blood vessels that look like a city highway system under a microscope. The vessels become leaky, which causes the indicators of cancer(ex: blood in the stool - rectal cancer; blood in the sputum - throat cancer, etc.).
The theory behind the treatment is since the body already has these inhibitors, it protects the bone marrow(white blood cells) when used, DOES NOT CAUSE PEOPLE TO LOSE THEIR HAIR OR HAVE THE DEBILITATING NAUSEA. Though the other things are more important, the nausea and vomiting from the treatment makes life miserable for the patient. Angiogenesis inhibitors would reduce or eliminate that. If angiogenesis inhibitors would consistently work, none of those things would be a problem. You would take a pill and the situation would either leave a tumor in a spot where it would not affect the body(would not metastasize or grow) and there would not be the nasty side effects.
The problem was, a few years ago, AVASTIN was supposed to be the wonder drug.. It DID NOT 'hit it out of the park' in scientific terms.. There are other anti-angiogenesis drugs like endostatin that have been around and used in combination with other treatments.....Dr Folkman died before he got to see the fruition of some of his bigger experiments.. I call Harvard from time to time, and the research is still going full bore... There has been compassion approval by the FDA to use some of these drugs as alternative treatments, with success.. Compassion approval is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO GET and insurance companies are not necessarily eager to pay for those treatments.......I AM WONDERING IF ANYONE ELSE HAS USED THIS TREATMENT, EITHER IN COMBINATION WITH OTHER TREATMENTS, OR AS A STAND ALONE TREATMENT?? If you ahve, can you share how much success there has been???
