Faculty Bibliography

An aneurysm, a potentially fatal and common condition, is a ballooning of an artery, and it usually develops painlessly. The chief danger is that an aneurysm can burst suddenly, without warning, and cause death within minutes. The aorta, the body's main artery, carries blood from the heart to supply oxygen and other nutrients to the rest of the body. Until recently, the standard procedure for repairing an aortic aneurysm before it bursts involved making a long incision in the chest or abdomen, removing the damaged part of the artery, and replacing it with a prosthetic graft. The new procedure is less painful and seems to have fewer risks than the standard surgery. Doctors perform it by making small incisions in the groin to insert a thin tube and the collapsed device into an artery. Then, aided by X-rays, they guide the device to the aneurysm and expand it. Blood flows through the new channel, relieving pressure on the aorta

Each blocked the growth of blood vessels that tumors need for nourishment. The tumors stopped growing, and there was no spread of malignant cells. The scientists expect to begin testing the therapy on humans in 18 months

The developers of the treatment say it might overcome shortcomings that have doomed earlier similar attempts to starve cancers. Previous efforts to strangle tumors have failed because cancers can use more than one method to grow blood vessels. Experts hope the new approach interferes with a process that is essential to all these methods of growth. The Scripps Institute team used two proteins in the animal tests. The first was a genetically engineered monoclonal antibody that the researchers developed at the institute and that the researchers have licensed to Ixsys Inc. of San Diego. The antibody is highly specific; it blocks only a substance known as integrin alpha beta, which seems to bind cells lining the blood vessels. 'The antibody tricks these newly forming vessels into self-destruction, or programmed cell death, by interfering with their survival signal,' [David Cheresh] said. 'When the signal is blocked, the cells think they are in the wrong place and commit suicide.'

The proteins, which are either genetically engineered or synthetic, block the growth of blood vessels that feed cancerous tumors, starving them and making them shrink. The proteins were not toxic in the experiments conducted by researchers from the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and seemed not to affect noncancerous tissue. The Scripps findings add to proof from other recent experiments that cancers are dependent on angiogenesis, [Judah Folkman] said in an interview. The Scripps team reported that the proteins destroyed newly sprouting blood vessels, thus choking off the blood supply that carries nourishment to tumors and carries cancerous cells to other parts of the body. The result was that the tumors shriveled and also stopped spreading, in the process known as metastasis

Researchers in California on Dec 29, 1994 reported that in laboratory experiments on animals they had discovered a potentially powerful way to make tumors regress with a single injection of either of two types of proteins, which block the growth of blood vessels that feed cancerous tumors. The findings were reported in the Dec 30 issue of Cell