He took human breast tumor cells, implanted them in mice and waited for metastases to occur.
Google told him he suffered from numerous conditions he never had, including brain metastases, aortic aneurysm and a stroke.
Within twenty-four hours, Sara was scheduled to see a radiation oncologist for whole-brain radiation to try to reduce the metastases.
This second tumor shrinkage finding could be important for the minority of patients whose metastases are only slightly too big to attempt a curative surgery.
After the drug was stopped, mice treated with the anti-angiogenic drug "had more metastases, the metastases occurred more quickly, and they died sooner, " Kerbel says.
That could yield new sales for a drug that now has been used merely as supportive care to prevent fractures in patients with cancer bone metastases.
One trial is pitting the drug against standard therapy among colon cancer patients with liver metastases, looking to slow the time it takes the cancer to progress.
He took a strange cocktail of 17 vitamins and supplements, including shark cartilage pills, and imagined the metastases were rats and he was chasing them with a club.
The second study looked at the effect of aspirin on cancer metastases and found that aspirin appeared to reduce the risk of cancer spreading by 36 percent over 6.5 years.
Late last year, the drug chalked up a medical first when it became the first drug to delay the onset of bone metastases in high-risk prostate cancer patients who were failing hormone therapy.
FORBES: Amgen Exec: "Clearly Superior" Prostate Cancer Drug Will Be Huge
But Harper says the way the trial was designed, it would have been nearly impossible to show a survival difference, as patients immediately went on another approved bone drug as soon as the developed metastases.
FORBES: Amgen Exec: "Clearly Superior" Prostate Cancer Drug Will Be Huge
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