Axitinib is an agent that targets angiogenesis -- blood supply to a tumor. It disrupts blood vessels that grow and provide nutrients to cancer cells. Without the nutrients and oxygen supplied by blood vessels, cancer cells cannot grow or replicate.

Researchers conducted a trial to evaluate axitinib in the treatment of metastatic breast cancer. Patients were either given Taxotere or Taxotere plus axitinib. Anticancer responses were achieved in 40 percent of patients treated with the addition of axitinib to Taxotere, compared with only 23 percent of patients treated with Taxotere alone.

The researchers concluded -- that the addition of axitinib to Taxotere improves anticancer responses and delays cancer progression compared to Taxotere alone in the treatment of metastatic breast cancer.

My fellow blogger Jacki recently posted about the effect of alcohol and breast cancer risk in her post titled Thought for the Day: Bingeing and breast cancer.

But why does alcohol consumption stimulate the growth of breast cancer cells?

A study in mice shows that alcohol consumption stimulated the growth and progression of breast cancer by the development of new blood vessels - a process called angiogenesis.

The article stated that "It does this by boosting expression of a factor known as vascular endothelial growth factor or VEGF". Dr. Jian-Wei Gu and colleagues from the University of Mississippi Medical Center examined the effects of tumor growth in mice.

For 4 weeks, 6-week old female mice consumed regular drinking water or water containing 1 percent alcohol, which is equivalent to about 2 to 4 drinks in humans. In week 2, the animals were inoculated with mouse breast cancer cells.

"We found after about 4 weeks that breast tumor size almost doubled in mice that drank alcohol compared to control mice given plain water," Gu noted in a telephone interview with Reuters Health. Moderate alcohol intake also caused a noteworthy increase in tumor blood vessels compared with no alcohol intake.

"VEGF can promote the formation of new blood vessels," Gu said. "This suggests that alcohol can induce tumor angiogenesis."

Researchers at Johns Hopkins discovered that a drug commonly used to treat toenail fungus could block angiogenesis, blood vessels that feed a tumor.

The drug, itraconazole, is FDA approved for human use, which may fast-track its availability as an anti-cancer drug.

If you are interested in reading more about Angiogenesis and cancer growth you can read my post back in July.

The researchers at this point have yet to determine exactly how itraconazole works to stop vessel growth.

More and more media reports are mentioning the potential merits of marijuana. The most recent headlines say the active ingredient in the drug cuts tumor growth in common lung cancers in half and greatly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread.

Researchers at Harvard University tested marijuana's main ingredient, delta-tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, in both lab and mouse studies and say their experiments are the first to show THC inhibits the growth of cancer.

Researchers are not certain why THC inhibits tumor growth, but it could be that the substance activates molecules that arrest the cell cycle. THC may also interfere with angiogenesis and vascularization, which promotes cancer growth.

There is a long way to go in the study of THC. Yet "the beauty of this study is that we are showing that a substance of abuse, if used prudently, may offer a new road to therapy against lung cancer," says Anju Preet, Ph.D., a researcher in the Division of Experimental Medicine.

When Dr. Jian-Wei Gu went to Mississippi to study the cardiovascular system and the process of blood vessel growth, he had no idea he'd make national headlines about his research into the world of cancer.

Gu, assistant professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, says his discovery of the mechanism by which alcohol consumption causes tumor growth was purely accidental.

And extremely significant.

Scientists have known for a hundred years about the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. A study from Paris in 1910 showed that 80 percent of patients with cancer of the esophagus or gastric track were alcoholics. More recently, scientists have found correlations between alcohol consumption and cancer of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, large bowel, and even the breasts. Yet lab experiments have always failed to show the effects in animals that investigators knew to be true in humans.

Until now.

It seems past studies used too much alcohol -- in concentrations of 20 percent -- and the animals just wasted away while showing no tumor growth. But when Gu used concentrations of one percent -- about one to two drinks per day in humans -- to study blood vessel growth, he detected stimulated tumor growth in both chick embryos and mice. Thus, his cancer discovery was born.

Gu has further concluded that melanoma cancers in mice grew significantly faster and larger in the mice who consumed the equivalent of one or two alcoholic drinks a day than the mice receiving no alcohol.

Gu's findings, now confirmed by other scientists, are evidence of what many have long suspected -- alcohol, even in moderation, increases cancer risk.

Glioblastoma multiform, (GBM) is the most aggressive form of the primary brain tumors known as gliomas. The tumors do not spread throughout the body like other forms of cancer, but cause symptoms by invading the brain.

A new drug called AZD2171 (Recentin), is an angiogenesis inhibitor that blocks tumor blood supply and shows promise in treating deadly glioblastoma brain cancers. Recentin suppresses the growth of blood vessels that feed the tumors.

The preliminary findings of the Phase II study show that researchers found that Recentin could significantly reduce the size of glioblastoma tumors and can help reduce brain swelling.

"Patients with recurrent glioblastomas desperately need new, effective treatment alternatives," said study author Dr. Tracy Batchelor, chief of neuro-oncology.

Recent preliminary results from a Phase II clinical trial showed patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme, a form of primary brain cancer, experienced a significant tumor response rate with minimal side effects when treated with enzastaurin, an oral, targeted agent under development at Eli Lilly and Company.

On Thursday Eli Lilly & Co announced that it has stopped the Phase III trial of this experimental brain cancer drug. They determined that the treatment would not be any more effective than current chemotherapy treatments. The company said that it will still be evaluating enzastaurin as a potential treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. They will also be doing some trials that test the drug on other cancers, such as breast, colon, lung, ovarian and prostate.

Enzastaurin belongs to the families of drugs called protein kinase inhibitors and angiogenesis inhibitors.

Recurrent ovarian cancer patients usually do not have many effective treatment options and long term survival is low. Research continues to evaluate ways to improve outcomes for patients with this disease.

An article published in Gynecologic Oncology said that Thalomid (thalidomide) appears to be safe and may provide an effective treatment option for patients with recurrent ovarian cancer. Thalomid is a pill that helps block angiogenesis. Anti-angiogenesis medication inhibits blood vessel formation so that cancer growth is limited by the lack of blood supply to the tumor. The drug is also thought to cause activity that stimulates the immune system to help fight cancer cells.

Researchers from Stanford University recently conducted a clinical trial evaluating Thalomid in the treatment of recurrent ovarian cancer. The trial included 17 patients who had received prior therapy. Three patients achieved an anticancer response, 18 percent and six patients achieved stabilization of their cancer, 35 percent. After one year of treatment, nearly 67 percent of patients who either achieved an anticancer response or disease stabilization had not experienced a progression of their disease.

This summer I had written a post about angiogenesis and Dr. Judith Folkman who had come up with the theory in the early sixties. Angiogenesis is a normal process in growth and development, as well as in wound healing. However, this is also the process that forms new blood vessels for cancer cells to survive and grow.

Angiogenesis and its complexities are still being studied so that new drugs can target the cancer's cells ability to receive a blood supply and grow. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin Madison School of Medicine and Public Health were studying a protein that regulates the maturation of blood cells and instead discovered a new part of the mechanism of angiogenesis.

The tests showed that a gene that makes a compound call NK-B can inhibit angiogenesis in four different ways which could be a promising way to halt tumor growth.

Emery Bresnick, the senior author on the study says "we have discovered a new peptide that clearly suppresses angiogenesis via a novel multi-component mechanism."

According to a report in the August 15th Cancer Research stem cell-like glioma cells, taken from glioblastoma biopsy specimens, promote tumor angiogenesis by secreting levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) at levels ten to 20 fold higher than ordinary glioma cells.

Figuring out a way to control angiogenesis (growth of new blood vessels to the tumor) is what this is all about. Brain cancer is hard to treat and for it to become a chronic disease we need specialized medications that target the cancer cells. By understanding the stem cell-like glioma cells, which the researchers see have characteristics that contribute to tumor malignancy, they can then come up with drugs that prohibit angiogenesis from occurring thus killing the cancer cell.

One of the keys to finding a cure for cancer is to understand how cancer grows and spreads within the body. Angiogenesis is our body's ability to form new blood vessels. This is important and needed for the body to help heal wounds and is also a part of a woman's menstruation each month. Its function in our bodies is a positive thing most of the time.

Angiogenesis also has a role in how cancer cells grow to become tumors. Cancer cells need a blood supply to live and grow. The cancerous tumor actually develops its own blood supply by sending messages to nearby blood vessels. These vessels then have the ability to grow toward the tumor. The tumor then has its own blood vessels to thrive, survive and grow.

This was not taken seriously back in 1961 when Dr. Judith Folkman came up with the theory of angiogenesis. He felt strongly that tumors could not grow bigger than a head of a pin without blood supply. He thought that an entirely new way to treat cancer would be to block this blood vessel growth to the tumor. Decades of work has proven this theory to be correct. What changed a lot of people's minds was an experiment that was done at the end of the 1970's at Dr. Folkman's lab. Tumor cells were put into a rabbit's eye, a place in the eye where there are no blood vessels. Blood vessels did grow toward and into the eye where the cancerous cells lived.