[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Many promising cancer drugs in the pipeline 04:37 p.m May 06, 1998 Eastern By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two drugs that work together to starve out tumors in mice may show great promise but are far from being the only new weapons being developed in the fight against cancer, researchers said Wednesday. More than 300 new therapies are currently being tested, ranging from drugs that directly target tumors, to vaccines that turn the body's defenses against tumors, to gene therapy that aims to stop cancer at the most basic level. The two compounds that drew such attention this week, angiostatin and endostatin, take an indirect route. Known as angiogenesis inhibitors, they starve tumors by stopping them from growing new blood vessels to feed themselves. Rockville, Maryland-based EntreMed is developing the drugs, which are at least a year away from clinical trials in humans. ``They need to make enough of this stuff,'' Dr. Ted Gansler of the American Cancer Society said in a telephone interview. ''Mice are a lot smaller than people. It doesn't take much material to cure a mouse.'' Several other companies are working on the same approach. Some, smarting from the huge publicity EntreMed has won, have been sending out ``me too'' announcements about their own drugs. For instance, Pennsylvania-based Magainin Pharmaceuticals Inc. has its compound, squalamine, in Phase I safety trials in human volunteers. Derived from shark tissue, squalamine is also an inhibitor of angiogenesis. La Jolla, California-based Agouron has started Phase II/III safety and efficacy trials of its compound AG3340, another drug that blocks blood vessel formation and which patients could take as a pill. Other companies include Boston Life Sciences, whose troponin I is derived from human cells, Techniclone Corp and Ilex Oncology Inc., whose ``tumor homing peptide'' is linked to the anti-cancer drug doxorubicin in a compound called ImTHP-dox, which the company says seeks out and destroys developing blood vessels in tumors. In Britain, the Cancer Research Campaign charity said it hoped to test combretastatin A4 on humans in November. In animals it has killed off up to 95 percent of solid tumor cells by starving them of their blood supply. A synthetic derivative of the extract of the African bush willow, combretastatin was developed by Bob Pettit of Arizona State University. It is licensed to Oxigene, a Swedish medical technology company. Then there are the vaccines. In Los Angeles the John Wayne Cancer Institute is preparing to start Phase III clinical trials -- the last stage before seeking Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval -- of a vaccine against melanoma, the deadly form of skin cancer. Dozens of other laboratories are looking at gene therapy, aimed at replacing the faulty genes that can lead to cancer. Conventional treatment has become better, too, with light-activated drugs that can kill tumors without hurting healthy surrounding tissue, targeted radiation therapy and antibodies that carry drugs straight to a tumor. Survival rates have risen. In the 1930s, according to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), only one in four patients lived for five years after being diagnosed with cancer. Now 97 percent of women with breast cancer that has not spread live for five years or more, 80 percent of children with acute lymphocytic leukemia live, and 87 percent of prostate cancer patients survive. The National Cancer Institute has an Internet site that gives information about clinical trials. It can be found at http://cancertrials.nci.nih.gov. The American Cancer Society also provides information on drugs at www.cancer.org. Best, Terry "Lawyer - one trained to circumvent the law" - The Devil's Dictionary Subscribe/Unsubscribe, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the body of the message enter: subscribe/unsubscribe law-issues