How soon can new anti-angiogenic treatments be used in everyday practice?
If ongoing clinical trials are positive, the agents now in late-phase clinical trials could be approved by the FDA and available for general use as cancer treatments within two to five years. These include Marimastat, a matrix metalloproteinase inhibitor, and thalidomide, a drug with multiple mechanisms that has shown some evidence of biologic activity in gliomas (brain tumors) and Kaposi’s sarcoma. Many of the most promising angiogenesis inhibitors, including angiostatin and endostatin, are not yet in clinical trials and, if they prove to be effective, are years away from general use. A number of currently available agents have some degree of anti-angiogenesis activity, including certain steroids, hormonal agents, and interferons, but they are not very potent angiogenesis inhibitors. 12. Will angiostatin and endostatin be available outside of clinical studies (compassionate use)? Neither angiostatin nor endostatin has entered any human studies yet and researchers expect they will not
