Tumors: What Does Not Kill Them Makes Them Stronger

摘要

In the early 1970s the late Judah Folkman, then at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper that broke entirely new ground in the treatment of cancer. Folkman observed that in culture many tumors stop growing at roughly the same size. Lack of blood supply was the reason, Folkman said. Without blood vessels to carry nutrients into the solid mass of tumor cells, the cells could not continue to divide and grow. Folkman saw this as a promising new approach to therapy: block the growth of blood vessels and starve the tumor to death. Although the medical establishment was initially hostile, research continued and antiangiogenic drugs, which block the proliferation of blood vessels, were eventually shown to be of some benefit in some types of cancer. While this changed the clinical treatment of cancer, the outcome was often puzzling.