I found this interesting, but how well-accepted are his theories? If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, his shtick is that tumors can’t grow without new blood vessels and that there are substances that can suppress vessel growth so the micro-tumor can never get any bigger.
He also argues that some foods can prevent blood vessel growth in the first place.
Here’s his list of top anti-angiogenic foods:
Well Hell, I’ll be immortal 'cause I eat just about all of those all the time.
ETA – Meant To Have A Question Mark After Post Title
There are tons of ways known to kill cancerous cells. Killing cancerous cells is easy. The difficult part is killing cancerous cells in a way that doesn’t kill normal cells. No tissue in your body can survive without blood vessels, so if you just somehow shut off all blood vessel growth, you’ll kill the cancer, but you’ll kill you, too.
I didn’t watch the linked video (if that’s what it was). Still, I wanted to say that angiogenesis is most certainly a “legit” concept and is already being used to design and guide therapeutics (eg. Avastin). BTW, the Wiki link on angiogenesis looks good.
For historical reasons, you may be interested to learn of Judah Folkman who single-handed developed (and originally conceived of) the field.
One thing to note, though, about angiogenesis and antiangiogenic drugs (and, ostensibly, antiangiogenic foods) - we, all of us, need new blood vessels all the time. In order to grow and in order to heal, new blood vessels are required to bring in nutrients, fuel, oxygen, white cells, etc. So, you don’t want to inhibit new blood vessel formation randomly or completely. A tall order. And, if certain foods inhibit new blood vessels in tumors, are you sure they don’t also inhibit them where they’re needed? Or maybe they do neither?
Finally, as an example of what can happen when you inhibit the wrong new blood vessels, I present Thalidomide.
Also note that while there are antiangiogenesis drugs, there are also drugs that encourage angiogenesis to a degree.
The theory being this: the blood vessels that feed tumours tend to be very inefficient: a haphazard mess with multiple pinch points. This makes it harder for drugs and the immune system to get at all parts of a tumour.
So, there are drugs that make angiogenesis more effective.
(I’ll try to find a cite later, this was just a drive-by)
I guess if I have a point, it’s that suppressing (but not eliminating) angiogenesis might not be a good idea; it might paradoxically protect the tumour.
Yeah, from what I’ve heard these things were miracle cures in mouse models, but they’re much less useful in clinical human cancer treatment. Similar to what Mijin was talking about, blocking angiogenesis can reduce the effectiveness of other chemotheraputics – drugs can’t get into the tumor if there aren’t blood vessels. Also in some cases angiogenesis inhibitors will shrink the original tumor while simultaneously increasing metastases.
Still, there are certain sorts of cancer where angiogenesis inhibitors are effective treatments.
Actually, thalidomide and its derivatives are extremely potent anti-cancer drugs, not only because of their antiangiogenic effects, but also because of their immunomodulatory properties. You just don’t want it anywhere near you if you’re pregnant though.
