A nanotech formulation may have saved one of the most promising broad-spectrum antiangiogenesis cancer therapies from being side-tracked due to neurotoxic side effects. From Children’s Hospital Boston via Science Daily “New Oral Angiogenesis Inhibitor Offers Potential Nontoxic Therapy For A Wide Range Of Cancers“:
The first oral, broad-spectrum angiogenesis inhibitor, specially formulated through nanotechnology, shows promising anticancer results in mice, report researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston.
Findings were published online on June 29 by the journal Nature Biotechnology [abstract].
Because it is nontoxic and can be taken orally, the drug, called Lodamin, may be useful as a preventive therapy for patients at high risk for cancer or as a chronic maintenance therapy for a variety of cancers, preventing tumors from forming or recurring by blocking the growth of blood vessels to feed them.
Lodamin may also be useful in other diseases that involve aberrant blood-vessel growth, such as age-related macular degeneration and arthritis.
…While a number of angiogenesis inhibitors, such as Avastin, are now commercially available, most target only single angiogenic factors, such as VEGF, and they are approved only for a small number of specific cancers. In contrast, Lodamin prevented capillary growth in response to every angiogenic stimulus tested. Moreover, in mouse models, Lodamin reduced liver metastases, a fatal complication of many cancers for which there is no good treatment.
—Jim
