Replies to post #840 on Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

Interesting read, isolution, especially this section:

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Colleague Paul Okunieff, M.D., head of Radiation Oncology at the Wilmot Cancer Center, is more blunt about the effects of low oxygen, known as hypoxia. "The tumor is meaner if it's hypoxic," Okunieff says. "Oxygen is by far the most powerful molecule for making cells vulnerable to radiation. Tumor cells that survive hypoxic conditions are often the cells that are most aggressive, most hardy, and most likely to go out and start new cancer colonies," he says. They're also the tumor cells most likely to have mutations that make them prone to spreading. …Besides less oxygen to form free radicals, cells under low-oxygen conditions don't divide as much, so they have more time to repair themselves before being vulnerable to radiation and other measures that target dividing cells. It's also harder to get drugs to areas without blood vessels, and without those blood vessels even the body's natural cancer-fighting immune cells can't reach the tumor to attack it.
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Combo therapy does not have to imply that an anti-angio/VTA drug is administered at exactly the same time as chemo/radiation and, for the reasons mentioned above, it may be advantageous to use “phased” scheduling (e.g. an anti-angio single agent one week and a chemo/radiation single agent the next week). However, nothing in the reference you cited appears to change the fundamental premise that an anti-angio/VTA drug by itself is unlikely to work well in most solid tumors.

[DewDiligence]

Cooking analogy:

This is a bit of a stretch, but it might be helpful for people who like to work with analogies.

Traditional anti-neoplastic agents such as chemotherapy and radiation work like a conventional oven, which cooks from the outside-in. Chemo and radiation, which work by direct contact with individual tumor cells, kill tumor cells on the outside of a tumor mass more effectively than tumor cells on the inside; i.e. they kill tumors from the outside-in.

Anti-angio/VTA drugs, on the other hand, work like a microwave, which cooks from the inside-out. Anti-angio/VTA drugs are generally most effective at starving tumor cells on the inside of a tumor mass, as these are the cells furthest from the oxygen/nutrient supply lines. Hence these drugs effectively kill a tumor from the inside-out.

Thus, we have the fundamental premise of combination therapy: one agent to kill from the outside-in and another to kill from the inside-out.

[swampboots]

RE: Kill or starve a tumor-I have noticed BSDM, as interesting data up to now re: Tri modal therapy.
"The concept of the triple therapy is therefore to attack cancer by using hyperthermia to create "super-radiation" and "super- chemotherapy," aided by direct cancer cell kill from hyperthermia itself.

BSD Medical produces sophisticated microwave systems used to precisely elevate the temperature of cancerous tumors, directly killing cancerous cells and significantly enhancing the effectiveness of certain other cancer therapies, including radiation and chemotherapy. To learn more about BSD Medical and hyperthermia therapy, visit www.bsdmc.com ."