colon cancer pill: A new kind of cancer treatment makes chemotherapy work better in people with advanced colon cancer.

The treatment is Avastin -- formerly called anti-VEGF -- the first of a new kind of cancer therapies. Conventional chemotherapy simply kills fast-growing cells -- including cancer cells and normal cells. Avastin keeps tumors from growing new blood vessels. This starves the tumor and slows or even stops its growth.
If an early cancer wasn't able to grow a new blood supply, it wouldn't get much bigger than a pinhead. But the new treatment is first being tested in people with advanced, spreading cancers. UCLA researcher Fairooz Kabbinavar, MD, studied the drug in patients with metastatic colon cancer.
"This study could give us a less toxic and a more effective weapon in our growing arsenal of cancer therapies," Kabbinavar says in a news release.
All 104 patients in the study received standard chemotherapy with fluorouracil and leucovorin. Two thirds of them also got high- or low-dose Avastin. Those who got Avastin -- particularly those who got the lower dose -- did much better than those treated with chemotherapy alone.
"The patients who got Avastin and chemotherapy did better in all the parameters we use to measure efficacy," Kabbinavar said.
Avastin can have very serious side effects.Clinical test findings are expected to show whether Avastin is ready for more widespread use.