Due to the pioneering research of Dr. M. Judah Folkman, Dyckman Professor of Pediatric Surgery at Children's Hospital and Professor of Anatomy and Cellular Biology at Harvard Medical School (HMS), a possible cancer treatment may soon be available.

Cancer Growth

In 1971, Folkman garnered widespread skepticism from the scientific community when he became the first person to suggest that cancer growth is regulated by a switch that is turned on or off by the balance of angiogenesis factors and inhibitors.

Angiogenesis is the process by which capillaries develop and grow.

For nearly thirty years, Folkman and his laboratory partners have been working on a process called anti-angiogenesis, which has proven effective against all types of cancer and successfully eradicated tumors in small animals.

The theory is that cancer growth is de- pendent upon capillary growth, and that if onecan stop capillary growth, cancer growth will haltas well.

"We've not seen a mouse tumor that we cannotregress," Folkman said in a speech before theNational Institutes of Health last year.

Folkman and his colleagues at HMS have isolatedangiogenesis inhibitors, also known asanti-angiogenesis factors, which have been testedupon animals. TNP470 was the first inhibitorisolated from a fungus. Four more inhibitors havebeen subsequently discovered in the human body.

In a report published in the November 1997issue of Nature, Folkman and his researchteam demonstrated that one of the most powerfulinhibitors they had isolated, endostatin, couldsignificantly shrink tumors in mice.

Folkman says endostatin and angiostatin arerelatively safe compared to other forms ofconventional chemotherapy.

"Chemotherapy has toxic side effects. Forendostatin, we don't have any side effects, nor dowe have any side effects for angiostatin," Folkmansays during an interview in a conference roomadjacent to his office at the Children's Hospital.

A Difficult Road

Folkman basks in praise and acclaim for hisresearch today, but he says this wasn't always thecase.

"I had to pursue it through immense criticismduring the 1970s," he says. "Students, fellowcolleagues would laugh. People would say, `Thosesurgeons shouldn't be doing research'".

Folkman began scientific research at his Ohiohigh school and continued through Ohio StateUniversity to medical school. "Many people inmedicine, to improve the medical field, doscience," Folkman says.

After graduating from HMS in 1957, Folkmanbegan a six-year surgical residency atMassachusetts General Hospital. Drafted in 1960for the U.S. Navy, Folkman was assigned to theNaval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md. It was therethat he first began working on blood substitutes.