Are We Waiting For Godot?
“There are four patients who have been on endostatin for 3.5 years or more with metastases of the liver. The tumors have stopped growing or arrested, mainly arrested. [The patients] love the drug. They don’t lose their hair, they [maintain] normal weight, they’re not nauseated, they go back to work, and they have strength.” But the clinical studies of endostatin stopped in February 2005, and supplies ran out a few months later. “After August 2, 2005, there was no more [endostatin] in the United States,” said Folkman, whose laboratory discovered the molecule about a decade ago. Endostatin is a protein produced by a fragment of the human gene collagen XVIII. Research by Folkman and others showed it could be a potent inhibitor of angiogenesis, a process that triggers blood vessel formation in so they grow larger. Following a New York Times feature, the drug was rapidly pushed to clinical trials. By traditional measures, early trials of endostatin failed. But angiogenesis inhibitors don’t
