BELIEVE it or not, boosting the blood supply to cancers can make them easier to kill.
Cancers often develop very poor blood supplies that leave parts of the tumour hypoxic, or starved of oxygen. This creates internal pressures that prevent anti-cancer drugs penetrating deeply enough to take effect. 鈥淲e have identified a way of using drugs to soften up cancers for subsequent treatment,鈥� says at the University of Oxford, who led the research.
McKenna and his team have identified four different drugs 鈥� including the anti-HIV drug nelfinavir 鈥� that can disrupt the process by which hypoxia occurs, restoring proper blood flow to the tumours and making them more vulnerable to chemotherapy (Cancer Research, ).
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The strategy has already been demonstrated in people with advanced pancreatic cancer. Tumours in six out of 10 patients treated shrank to a size where they could be cut out, compared with an expectation of 1 in 10 under conventional treatment. Now, a larger trial with about 50 people is under way, again using nelfinavir to open up the tumours to attack prior to chemotherapy.
McKenna says the findings do not undermine the rationale for using other drugs to block the blood supply to cancers. If anything, he says, the two approaches are complementary, as tumours softened up and then shrunk by chemotherapy could be finished off with blood-vessel blockers.