Interfering with any of the critical steps may cause the whole process to stop. There are a large number of drugs currently in development to block angiogenesis. Different drugs are being developed to attack each of the steps in angiogenesis. The hope is that by attacking the angiogenesis process doctors can indirectly attack the tumor by preventing it from growing new arteries and veins. If this can be done then tumor growth may be stopped or even reversed by simply starving the tumor for blood.
Conventional chemotherapy kills tumors by poisoning rapidly growing cancer cells.
They have no effect on the other processes in tumor growth such as angiogenesis. Unfortunately, if any cancer cells are left after the chemotherapy is gone, then they will regrow the tumor with time. There are hopes that chemotherapy and antiangiogenesis drugs can be used together in order to obtain a maximum effect. The idea is to treat the cancer patient with both conventional chemotherapy and an antiangiogenesis drug at the same time. The chemotherapy will kill the tumor cells and any surviving cells will be prevented from growing back by the antiangiogenesis drug.