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What will the oncology therapeutic market look like in five years?  Current standards of care call for two to three cytotoxic drugs to be administered in combination, and often in conjunction with other modalities of treatment (surgery or radiation).  The announcement by the FDA in 2004 that anti-angiogenesis has been added to the list of approved treatment modalities opens the gates for an entirely new class of drugs and combination regimens. 

Recent understandings from multiple premier researchers worldwide have shed light on the fact that cancer cells have redundant, compensatory survival systems to ensure their proliferation.  Other recent findings have proven that tumors create unique, ideal environments for growth.  Therefore, in order to completely eliminate a tumor, existing cells must be destroyed and the environment must be returned to its normal state.  Anti-angiogenic compounds seek to either kill the cell by blocking key receptors or by helping to normalize the environment.

However, virtually all anti-angiogenic compounds either FDA approved and on the market, or in Phase II or Phase III clinical trials have similar mechanisms of action.  Once deployed, they perform as intended, but are limited against the tumor’s compensatory survival systems.  The current thinking is to use combination anti-angiogenics to achieve the broad activity needed.  However, economic pressures may limit the number of compounds that can be prescribed, forcing doctors to make tough decisions.

Caplostatin™ is the only compound known that has the necessary broad spectrum activity to completely shut down the tumor’s ability to proliferate.  This one compound stops the compensatory survival system problem and provides the best cost-benefit return.  Other benefits of Caplostatin include the fact that drug-drug interactions are minimized, and clinical costs to determine which combinations work best are greatly reduced.

Anti-angiogenic drugs will almost certainly play at least as prominent a role in cancer treatment as cytotoxics.  We believe that Caplostatin, with its broad spectrum activity, will be among doctors’ top choices in this class.