Failed cancer therapy revived as powerful tumor killer when combined with newer drugs
Patients with a type of liver cancer known as hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) often face an anxious wait after their tumor is removed. In up to half of these people, the cancer will return within 2 years after surgery or a treatment that destroys their tumors with heat. Researchers haven’t identified any therapies that can stop it from coming back. That could change thanks to a class of drugs once seen as a failed revolution in cancer therapy. Angiogenesis inhibitors, which throttle tumors by cutting off their blood supply, never measured up to expectations when they reached clinical trials more than 2 decades ago. But they are now getting a boost from a newer set of drugs with a more impressive track record: checkpoint inhibitors, which unleash the immune system’s T cells to attack tumors. At the...