A new study in mice suggests that a way of starving tumors of their blood supply may cause heart attacks and strokes. This study raises concerns about this type of cancer therapy according to the researchers at UCLA.

Drugs that block blood vessel growth, such as Avastin, do so from the outside of the cell by blocking vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a signaling protein.

In the study, Luisa Irula-Arispe and her team bred mice that lacked VEGF in endothelial cells. The team did not use drugs to block the VEGF. More than half of the mice in their study suffered heart attacks and fatal strokes and even those that lived became ill. Irula-Arispe said that signaling inside the cell is different that signaling outside the cell. She said it is not clear if such drugs as Avastin are dangerous., although she believes that researchers should try to find a more targeted way of getting the drug to the tumor. Currently Avastin and other such drugs are infused, and therefore circulate through the patient's whole body.

Looks like Roche's Avastin anti-cancer drug has received approval by the European Union for the treatment of lung cancer. The treatment will be available to non-small cell lung cancer patients in concert with traditional chemotherapy.

Although Avastin has shown to prolong survival over one year in those diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer, one has to wonder why it's being suggested for use with chemotherapy at the same time. Will it help the cancer patient live easier through chemotherapy treatments?

Is prolonging the lives of cancer patients an additional year (or more) the sole purpose for the approval of Avastin? One has to ask these hard questions in an age where there are still no cures for cancer, although targeted drug like Avastin -- which targets and kills cancer cells by taking out their blood supply -- are indeed steps forward.

Genentech posted a 41 percent increase in its profits for the company's recently completed second quarter on Wednesday in part on the strength of its cancer drugs.

Genentech's Avastin drug, which treats lung, breast and colon cancer, saw sales for the April-June period of this year rise 33 percent to $564 million.

If you're an Avastin customer, has the drug helped with your specific cancer and have you been pleased with the results? I've never met anyone using this drug and have been curious to see what effects it does have on the cancer types it is marketed to fight against.

Recently, a report came out from Health Canada possibly linking Avastin, a drug for colorectal cancer, with tracheo-esophageal fistula (an abnormal connection between the esophagus and the trachea).

This week, the manufacturer of Avastin, Roche's Genentech, has warned healthcare providers that Avastin has caused at least one fatality in a recent clinical study in patients with small cell lung cancer, according to the FDA. Genentech stopped the trial after the individual's death.

There are no plan to "re-engineer" the drug for the treatment of SCLC although other programs will go forward including those for non small cell lung cancer and kidney cancer, according to a Roche spokeswoman.

The FDA said there were two confirmed events of TE fistula, one fatal and another death in which TE fistula was suspected. Six other cases of TE fistula have also been reported in other lung and esophageal cancer studies.

Symptoms of TE fistula included chest pain, shortness of breath, wheezing or labored breathing, coughing or choking when eating or drinking, coughing up food or liquids, or wheezing sounds following every breath.

Avastin, which is used for advanced colorectal cancer, has been linked to tracheo-esophageal fistulas in a small number of Canadian patients, according to Health Canada officials. Tracheo-esophageal fistulas are abnormal connections between the esophagus and the trachea.

"A direct cause and effect between Avastin and these events has not been established, but cannot be ruled out," Health Canada said in its advisory. "Avastin should no longer be given to patients who develop a TE fistula."

Health Canada officials recommend that patients taking Avastin should contact their physicians if they develop any of the following: chest pain, shortness of breath, wheezing or labored breathing, coughing or choking when eating or drinking, coughing up food or liquids, or wheezing sounds following every breath.

Although a direct cause and effect relationship has not been confirmed between Avastin and TE fistula, it is still something to be aware of if you or a loved one is using this treatment.

ImClone Systems Inc.'s drug Erbitux has failed to help pancreatic cancer patients live longer. It's also failed to grow ImClone's market -- not surprising since it's the company's only drug.

Imclone, partnering with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., wanted to see Erbitux -- already cleared for use with colon, head, and neck cancers -- extend the lives of patients with cancer marked by a spread to the pancreas.

No one is giving up just yet, and Imclone plans additional tests on Erbitux's use in pancreatic cancer. A study using a combination of Erbitux and Avastin and chemotherapy is up next.

"There are reasons to think Erbitux works in pancreatic cancer, but the current results are not as dramatic as we hoped," said Alex Denner, lead for an executive committee that manages ImClone. "We remain committed to evaluating Erbitux in pancreatic cancer."

If approved, Erbitux will compete with Tarceva, sold by Roche Holding AG, Genentech Inc., and OSI Pharmaceuticals Inc. as a treatment for pancreatic and lung cancers.

About 37,170 new cases of pancreatic cancer are expected to occur in 2007 in the United States. And 33,370 people will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive cancers, and there is no screening option that works at catching the disease in its early stages.

Only about 5 percent of patients with pancreatic cancer are still alive five years after being diagnosed.

Lung and colorectal cancer drug Avastin has been tested for the first time against the most common and deadly form of brain cancer.

Duke University researchers used Avastin, known chemically as bevacizumab, in combination with a standard chemotherapy agent in patients with recurrent brain tumors called gliomas. Good news -- the two drugs together stopped tumor growth for twice as long as any other therapy.

Gliomas are mostly incurable in all cases, but this new treatment approach may extend life and may help preserve physical and mental function for a longer period of time for patients fighting this deadly disease.

"These results are exciting because of the possible implications for a patient population that currently has the poorest possible prognosis going into treatment -- those with malignant brain tumors that have recurred after initial treatment," says the lead researcher whose findings appear in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

One week ago, researchers found themselves humbled by the disappointing fact that promising cancer drug Avastin had failed to help patients with pancreatic cancer live longer. In fact, not only did the drug fail to extend survival, it actually caused adverse side effects such high blood pressure and bleeding in the stomach and intestine.

In a study of 600 patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, those who received Avastin in addition to standard chemotherapy lived for only six months -- the same amount of time as those who received chemotherapy alone.

Earlier studies predicted Avastin might improve survival. It worked in patients with advanced colorectal cancer. And so it was no surprise that crowds of pancreatic cancer patients wanted a shot at this potential wonder drug that in the end turned out -- for them -- to be not so wondrous.

In a Phase III trial involving 878 lung cancer patients, the drug bevacizumab, known as Avastin, increased the overall survival rate to 35 percent when combined with the chemotherapy drugs paclitaxel and carboplatin. Patients who were given paclitaxel and carboplatin without Avastin had a 15 percent chance of responding to treatment.

Two months ago, the Food and Drug Administration approved Avastin as a first-line treatment for patients with inoperable, locally advanced, recurrent or metastatic non-squamous, non-small cell lung cancer. Avastin works by stopping the formation of blood vessels that feed oxygen and nutrients needed for tumor growth. Because the drug is a targeted therapy, in that it leaves healthy tissue alone while going after cancer cells, some of the traditional side-effects from conventional chemotherapy, such as hair loss, nausea, or vomiting, are avoided.

According to Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern Chief of Hematology/Oncology's Dr. Joan Schiller, "Twenty years ago, we thought no treatment could help patients with advanced lung cancer. Ten years ago, we found that chemotherapy could improve survival of these patients. Now, we are finding out that this very unique drug called Avastin can also help improve survival even more. Avastin is the first of this very exciting family of drugs to be approved for lung cancer, and there are several other drugs of this type under development which may prove to work even better."

Patients with advanced kidney cancer might be able to prolong survival if they received a combination of two drugs before surgery is performed. Scientists at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre, studied the effect of Avastin (bevacizumab) and Tarceva (eroltinib) given before a patient's tumor was removed.

Avastin was developed by Genetech and its partner Roche. It is an anti-angiogenesis drug which starves the tumor of blood supply. Tarceva is a drug that blocks a signal which tell cells to divide. The patients received Avastin intravenously once every two weeks for four weeks and took Tarceva orally every night for eight weeks before they had surgery.

When kidney cancer has metastasized to the lymph nodes or other organs the five year survival rate is not very high. Dr. Eric Jonasch, a professor of medicine at the University of Texas says "The main aim of this study was to look at the efficacy and safety of using these targeted therapies before surgery; and our results have shown that there were few side effects and that it prolonged the survival of our patients".

Last night I watched the first of the two-part series Breaking the Cancer Code with Katie Couric. Current chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer are, as Couric called it, "a scorched body approach" for cancer patients. "They throw everything against the wall to see what sticks."

It is frustrating for the cancer patient, for the oncologist, for the cancer community. Why haven't we made more advancements, why don't we understand cancer any better than we do, why must we endure treatments that attack healthy cells in order to kill off cancerous ones with generalized treatments that might or might not stick? Because, right now, that's all there is to offer in the fight against cancer.

Which makes Couric's news feature all that more compelling -- and hopeful. The scientific community is beginning to make progress in discovering what cancer cells are made of and how they work. As a result, an emerging class of cancer treatment drugs, called targeted therapies, are beginning to show promise. Drugs that target the cancer cell without causing any collateral damage to healthy cells, like Herceptin, Gleevec and Avastin. Herceptin targets proteins on the surface of the cell, Gleevec works inside the cell to block cancer's growth and Avastin shuts down the blood vessels that feed the tumor.

Johns Hopkins University's Dr. Bert Vogelstein has spent 30 years unraveling the secret codes to cancer, and when referring to cancer he is quoted as saying, "It was a total mystery, a black box. It was like some plague from outer space."

Tonight, Couric takes a look at super computers that can take cancer cells and test which treatments work and which ones remain ineffective in treating an individual cancer -- before the cancer patient begins treatment. To watch an off camera discussion between Couric and CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook regarding targeted cancer therapies and super computers, watch this video.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a new warning labeling change regarding bevacizumab (Avastin) a cancer drug currently in use to treat colorectal cancer, that state an increased risk for a brain-bleeding condition and potential nasal septum perforation that can create a hole in the nose for those patients being treated with Avastin. The rare brain-capillary leak can trigger headache, seizure, blindness and other vision and neurological problems.

The FDA has published a letter sent by Genentec to healthcare providers notifying them of the new warnings, available as a pdf document.

In the meantime, Avastin's drug maker Genentech has asked for FDA approval for the drug in the treatment of advanced lung cancer and breast cancer.

Hormone refractory prostate cancer is when the prostate cancer cells continue to grow after an initial period of success with hormonal therapy. Most prostate cancers are hormone dependent and require male sex hormones to grow, usually over time the prostate cancer cells develop the ability to grow in the absence of the male hormones.

In this randomized Phase III trial, men with hormone refractory prostate cancer that has metastasized will receive standard chemotherapy with the drugs docetaxel and prednisone. Half of the participants will be randomly assigned to additionally receive treatment with a monoclonal antibody called bevacizumab (Avastin).

Avastin works by stopping some cancers from developing new blood vessels. This reduces the cancer's supply of oxygen and nutrients, which causes the tumor to shrink, or at least to stop growing. Drugs that interfere with blood vessel growth in this way are called angiogenesis inhibitors or anti-angiogenics.

This Phase III trial will answer the question of whether adding bevacizaumab to docetaxal and prednisone actually does improve survival over the current standard of care.

You can join this trial that researchers will enroll 1,020 men with metatastic prostate cancer that is progressing despite hormone therapy by going to see the list of eligibility criteria.

At this time, there are 200 companies engaged in 600 clinical trials that involve 340 immunotherapy drugs -- all under study in an attempt to assist in the treatment of 40 different cancers. The top five targeted cancers are melanoma, breast, lung, prostate, and colorectal.

While antibody studies are the top headline-makers right now, cancer vaccines are following behind. With the recent approval of Gardasil -- the cervical cancer vaccine -- the push for more vaccine options will become strong. Future industry challenges also include discovering strong antigens, effective immunomodulators, and suitable delivery technologies.

Powerful drugs like Avastin, Erbitux, and Rituxan are just the precursors to what might lie ahead for cancer patients as a result of this widespread effort to knock cancer out of the ballpark.

I feel fortunate to have received every cancer drug I needed to fight my breast cancer -- Adriamycin, Cytoxan, Herceptin, and every nausea pill, pain capsule, and anti-anxiety formula on the market. I got exactly what doctors thought I needed -- without worry about availability or funding or politics. I am lucky. Some in the UK are not so lucky.

Two targeted therapies for bowel cancer will not be used in Britain's state-run health system, according to NICE -- the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. NICE, the country's financial watchdog, determined the high cost of the medicines meant their use was not compatible with the best use of resources. Patients are angry because these same two drugs -- Avastin and Erbitux -- are used widely in the United States and in much of Europe. And while neither drug offers a cure for bowel cancer, both treatments have been shown in clinical trials to extend life expectancy by four or five months in some patients.

Based on doses given during the trials, it is estimated that the average cost of treating one patient with Avastin would be around 16,800 pounds and with Erbitux -- about 11,700 pounds. Apparently, this is too much. But according to Hilary Whittaker of the charity Beating Bowel Cancer, the decision to deprive patients of this medication is a scandal. I agree. And for these patients, I am sad.