Avastin: New Cancer Fighting Drug Launched

A new drug called Avastin has just been launched, which claims to be a breakthrough cancer therapy that fights the disease by impeding the blood supply that tumours need to survive. Apparently this remarkable drug will help some patients add months or even years to their lives.

But Avastin may have some competition - not market competition from another brand, but competition for effectiveness. Because the most popular prescription drugs on the market today (taken by millions of people worldwide) actually stimulate the growth of new blood vessels... yes, you guessed it, I'm talking about Statin drugs.

Miracle drugs won't work many miracles if they simply undo one another.

A pretty penny

Cancer cells thrive and multiply when they prompt the body to create new blood vessels; a process called angiogenesis. When anti-angiogenesis therapy was first conceived of more than 40 years ago it was dismissed as a farfetched idea. Today it's considered the future of mainstream cancer therapy, and now Avastin is leading the vanguard of this new class of drugs.

It is thought to be beneficial against colorectal cancer where the cancer has just metastasised and spread to other areas of the body. While additional trials are underway to determine Avastin's effectiveness against other types of cancer, you can be certain that some oncologists will want to prescribe Avastin for a variety of cancer types right away.

Clash of the Titans

As with most drugs, Avastin use comes with a formidable list of possible side effects, including high blood pressure, diarrhoea, blood clots and a lowered white blood cell count, which can increase the risk of infection. Some patients have also reported internal bleeding and ruptures in the colon. And Avastin has been shown to be effective only when used with a programme of traditional chemotherapy, which often subjects the body to alarming stresses.

Of course, for most cancer patients, the side effects will be a tolerable trade off in exchange for the promise of additional months or years of life. So it would be a particular shame if they were taking another medication that actually worked against their best efforts to survive.

In a previous e-Alert, I told you about the concern that cholesterol-lowering statin drugs may promote cancer. Few studies have been conducted in this area, and so far the results are conflicting. One of the primary reasons that further research needs to explore the statin/cancer question is this: Statins have been shown to stimulate the growth of new blood vessels - the very situation that Avastin is designed to reverse.

It's impossible to predict which drug would win out in such a confrontation. But with the number of statin prescriptions estimated at well over 100 million worldwide, you can be sure that there will be statin-users who will also end up using Avastin.

Spice it up

Avastin is not a preventive therapy, of course. But there is a natural botanical that may provide protection against cancer in the same way that Avastin fights cancer.

A well-known cancer researcher, Dr Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D., has noted that in Sri Lanka the cancer mortality rate per 100,000 is 26.1 for females and 29.3 for males. The comparison of these numbers to America is unsettling: Cancer mortality per 100,000 in the US is 138.6 for women and an astounding 206.0 for men.

He adds that this difference is probably not due to genetic or hereditary factors, for two reasons: 1) the population of Sri Lanka has a wide diversity of ethnic backgrounds, and 2) the cancer rates of emigrates from Sri Lanka to North America and Europe rise considerably within just a generation or two.

Researchers believe that one nutritional element might be the key to the differences of these cancer statistics. In Sri Lanka a typical diet includes large amounts of turmeric - a spice that contains curcumin, used in curry powders. Dr. Moss recognises the following three important benefits of curcumin intake:

• Rich in antioxidants
• A natural anti-inflammatory
• Inhibits growth of new blood vessels in tumours

It seems that the people of Sri Lanka may be centuries ahead of the Western world in taking advantage of the cancer-fighting benefits of an anti-angiogenesis agent.