HER2 Support Group Forums - View Single Post - When do they know Treatment is working or not?

heblaj01 · 05-14-2006, 08:12 AM

The Bayer test is the only non invasive marker for HER-2 tumours but is not likely to detect early lesions & is cancer type specific.

A new marker is in the development stage by the team of Dr J. Folkman (at Harvard) the originator of the field of antiangiogenesis research.If it comes to fruition it will not only be able to detect microscopic tumours (probably of any origin) before cancer diagnostic by current methods is possible.

It will aso allow preventive treatments by slow but non toxic non specific antiangiogenesis medication.
This preventive treatment strategy (with doxycycline used as an antiangiogenesis agent not as an antibiotic) is already tried on a single young male U.K. patient in remission from a cancer with a 100% risk of recurrence for which there is already a very reliable monitoring marker.
Running perhaps closer to availability to all patients is the recent FACTT highly sensitive method of detecting protein markers such as HER-2/neu in serum.It can potentially detect early tumours. It is however at present cancer specific but could become less so in future development.

Ref:

Extracted from:

Summaries of 2005-2006 BCRF-funded research (by medical facility)http://www.bcrfcure.org/rese_summaries.html

Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
Judah Folkman, MD

Tumors grow and spread by recruiting their own network of blood vessels, a process called angiogenesis. Over the past year, with BCRF support, Dr. Folkman and his colleagues have have shown that a novel angiogenesis inhibitor, Caplostatin, can synergize Avastin and cause permanent dormancy of human cancer in laboratory models and result in 50% of tumors being eradicated. They have also developed a novel biomarker which is based on angiogenic proteins in platelets and which detects human cancers in models when they are still dormant and less than 1 millimeter in diameter (e.g., pinhead size).

They will continue these studies over the next year, when they intend to determine how breast cancer suppresses angiogenesis inhibitors that are normally in the tumor bed and also are normally present at distant sites, such as lymph nodes, to which tumor cells may metastasize in the future. They will try to demonstrate that the platelet angiogenesis proteome can predict drug resistance months to years before it occurs so that drug resistance can be prevented by adding the appropriate angiogenesis inhibitor.

Further, they will carry out a long-term study of treating primary and metastatic human breast cancers with Avastin plus Caplostatin to determine if these cancers can be eradicated, or if the angiogenic switch can be blocked in dormant non-angiogenic human breast cancers. Finally, they will chemically modify the endostatin peptide so that it has a long half-life in the circulation. Dr. Folk man’s overall goal is to initiate clinical trials of endostatin and Caplostatin in patients with advanced metastatic breast cancer.

05-14-2006, 08:12 AM	#5
heblaj01 Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 543	When do they know Treatment is working or not? The Bayer test is the only non invasive marker for HER-2 tumours but is not likely to detect early lesions & is cancer type specific. A new marker is in the development stage by the team of Dr J. Folkman (at Harvard) the originator of the field of antiangiogenesis research.If it comes to fruition it will not only be able to detect microscopic tumours (probably of any origin) before cancer diagnostic by current methods is possible. It will aso allow preventive treatments by slow but non toxic non specific antiangiogenesis medication. This preventive treatment strategy (with doxycycline used as an antiangiogenesis agent not as an antibiotic) is already tried on a single young male U.K. patient in remission from a cancer with a 100% risk of recurrence for which there is already a very reliable monitoring marker. Running perhaps closer to availability to all patients is the recent FACTT highly sensitive method of detecting protein markers such as HER-2/neu in serum.It can potentially detect early tumours. It is however at present cancer specific but could become less so in future development. Ref: Extracted from: Summaries of 2005-2006 BCRF-funded research (by medical facility)http://www.bcrfcure.org/rese_summaries.html Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA Judah Folkman, MD Tumors grow and spread by recruiting their own network of blood vessels, a process called angiogenesis. Over the past year, with BCRF support, Dr. Folkman and his colleagues have have shown that a novel angiogenesis inhibitor, Caplostatin, can synergize Avastin and cause permanent dormancy of human cancer in laboratory models and result in 50% of tumors being eradicated. They have also developed a novel biomarker which is based on angiogenic proteins in platelets and which detects human cancers in models when they are still dormant and less than 1 millimeter in diameter (e.g., pinhead size). They will continue these studies over the next year, when they intend to determine how breast cancer suppresses angiogenesis inhibitors that are normally in the tumor bed and also are normally present at distant sites, such as lymph nodes, to which tumor cells may metastasize in the future. They will try to demonstrate that the platelet angiogenesis proteome can predict drug resistance months to years before it occurs so that drug resistance can be prevented by adding the appropriate angiogenesis inhibitor. Further, they will carry out a long-term study of treating primary and metastatic human breast cancers with Avastin plus Caplostatin to determine if these cancers can be eradicated, or if the angiogenic switch can be blocked in dormant non-angiogenic human breast cancers. Finally, they will chemically modify the endostatin peptide so that it has a long half-life in the circulation. Dr. Folk man’s overall goal is to initiate clinical trials of endostatin and Caplostatin in patients with advanced metastatic breast cancer.