Cancer and Angiogenesis Cancer has long baffled medical science. The debilitating, frequently fatal disease often spreads throughout the body at an alarming rate. Until recently, scientists did not fully understand why. Dr. Judah Folkman, a professor of surgery at Children's Hospital in Boston, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, has spent the last 30 years championing a controversial theory. Through capillaries, nutrients, oxygen, and various signaling molecules diffuse into cells.
Tumors start out without circulation.
In early stages, they are limited to a trickle of nutrients that can diffuse from the nearest capillary. Then, somehow, tumors begin to stimulate healthy tissue to make thousands of new blood vessels to supply the cancerous growth. Without this ability to nourish itself and grow, a tumor cannot enlarge. At the same time, a primary tumor also sends chemical signals that prevent other tumors from growing in other parts of the body. When the tumor is removed, there is nothing to stop other tumors from growing elsewhere.