Email a Friend
Print ArticleCancer Health Center
This article is from the WebMD News Archive
Expert: Cancer Treatable in 10 Years
July 16, 2003 -- Cancer will become a manageable disease within a decade, a cancer expert predicts.
It's not just any expert. The prediction comes from Judah Folkman, MD, director of Surgical Research at Children's Hospital in Boston and professor of both pediatric surgery and cell biology at Harvard Medical School.
Folkman is famous for showing that cancers can't grow unless they make the body create new blood vessels for them. Drugs that stop this process -- known as angiogenesis inhibitors -- literally starve tumors. What has him so excited are two studies that for the first time show that cancer patients do better when treated with drugs of this type.
"As angiogenesis inhibitors in general get better -- gradually as the side effects come down -- we think in five to 10 years you can convert cancer to a chronic illness like heart disease or diabetes," Folkman told WebMD during a news conference at the annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research.
Despite the rosy prediction, Folkman notes that it's going to take doctors a long time to learn how -- and when -- to use these new treatments. Even then, he says, they're going to have to change the way they think about cancer.
"The hardest part is the translation from clinical trials to patients," he says. "That is very difficult and takes a long time. The reason doctors call what they do "practice" is that it takes years and years to learn. Once you have learned these skills, you are not enthusiastic about changing. Imagine how hard it would be to get used to driving on the left side of the road rather than on the right. Changing medical practice is even more difficult than that."
At the news conference, Folkman introduced two recent clinical studies of different angiogenesis inhibitors.
"You will hear of two new drugs that will set a new standard for medical practice," he said.
del.icio.us
Colon cancer specialist Nancy Kemeny, MD, explains the role of heredity in colon cancer.
Targeted Therapy for Lung Cancer
