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Kills Tumors Dead

Posted by michael on from the take-two-call-me-in-the-morning dept.

KeelSpawn writes "Today's cancer drugs are notorious for killing healthy cells along with cancerous ones. A new anticancer approach could offer a more precise option: kill just the tumor by choking off its blood supplies. The first drugs based on this approach are now in human trials and, if they work, could provide a virtually side-effect-free means of fighting a host of cancers."

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  1. This remind me of.. by Xunker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    .. an experimental treatment I remember hearing about a few years ago-- A while ago there was talk of a similar approach using thalidomide, a drug banned a few dacades ago. In the 1950's it caused a large number of deformed infants (so-called "flipper babies") when their mothers took it while pregnant.

    It works by inhibitiing the growth of blood vessels. Which is fine for adults because grown people don't grow new vessels very often under normal circumstances, but when a tumor is growing, it does need new vessals-- thalidomide inhibits that and the tumour is starved of blood supplies.

    --
    Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.