How does anti-angiogenic therapy differ from the standard tumor treatments?
Conventional anti-cancer treatment has generally utilized chemotherapy. This type of treatment uses relatively non-specific agents that target growing cells. Though tumors cells would most certainly be killed by this treatment, it also destroys other dividing cells such as hair follicles (which is why patients lose their hair), the cells that line the stomach (which is the cause of the nausea), and the blood-forming cells of the bone marrow (which is why people can become anemic, or have reduced numbers of white cells). In contrast, the anti-angiogenic therapies should target only the growing blood vessels and therefore should have many fewer side effects. Another very important difference between conventional chemotherapy and anti-angiogenic therapy is that patients often develop “resistance” to specific chemotherapies. Resistance develops when a subset of tumor cells acquires the ability to continue to grow in the presence of the chemotherapeutic agent. When this happens the tumor st
