Timing may be Essential in Combined Cancer Treatment
Reported December 27, 2004
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — The success of a cancer treatment that combines drugs inhibiting blood vessel growth with treatments that destroy cancer cells may depend on timing, according to a new study.
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston implanted human brain tissue into mice that were then treated with varying combinations of an antiangiogenesis drug — a drug that inhibits blood vessel growth — called DC101, and radiation therapy.
The authors describe how the abnormal, leaky and disfigured type of blood vessels supplying nutrients to a tumor makes it harder for chemotherapy drugs to enter the tumor or for radiation therapy to work. Antiangiogenesis drugs can help normalize these vessels and increase oxygenation, thus improving the effects of these treatments.
Results show after five days of DC101 treatment, blood vessel function peaked, with levels of cells that help support blood vessel walls at their highest. Researchers say it’s at this point that radiation therapy should be introduced.
Rakesh Jain, Ph.D., lead author of the study, concludes, “The success of this treatment approach depends on carefully scheduling when radiation is administered to take the greatest advantage of this window of vascular normalization.”
SOURCE: Cancer Cell, 2004;6:553-563
