AIDS TREATMENT NEWS Issue #141, December 23, 1991
John S. James
This new class of drugs, not yet tested in humans, prevents the growth of new blood vessels. In animal tests they have been effective in stopping growth of solid-tumor cancers (which must tell the body to create new blood vessels, since otherwise tumors cannot grow beyond a small size), and in KS (in which the lesions are caused by abnormal blood-vessel growth).
The leading anti-angiogenesis drugs at this time are AGM- 1470 (covered in AIDS TREATMENT NEWS #135, September 20, 1991), and SP-PG (being developed by Daiichi Pharmaceutical Company of Tokyo, with the help of Robert Gallo, M. D., and his laboratory at the U. S. National Cancer Institute).
The main obstacle to getting these drugs into human tests may be that both of the companies developing these drugs are Japanese, and inexperienced in working with the U. S. Food and Drug Administration. What often happens in these cases is that companies rely on consultants with long experience with the FDA -- much of it obsolete, since today the FDA should be involved much earlier than before, if companies want rapid movement on critical drugs for life-threatening conditions. (One way to overcome this bottleneck would be for the National Cancer Institute to work with the FDA on these projects, since it has much experience in working with the Agency in human tests of potential cancer treatments.)
New Antibiotics
Some of the important new antibiotics are clarithromycin and azithromycin (both now approved in the U. S., but for non-AIDS- related indications), and 566C80, available from Burroughs- Wellcome for pneumocystis treatment (but not prophylaxis) for patients who have failed other options.
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