Can we eat to starve cancer? - William Li
Summary
TLDRThe script discusses the medical revolution of angiogenesis, a process that controls blood vessel growth, which is crucial in both healing and disease, particularly cancer. It explains how blood vessels adapt to different body environments and how their regulation can prevent or promote diseases. The speaker highlights anti-angiogenic therapy as a novel approach to cancer treatment by starving tumors of blood supply. Additionally, the script explores the potential of diet in preventing angiogenesis-related diseases, suggesting that certain foods may inhibit blood vessel growth to cancers and obesity, offering a natural, preventative strategy.
Takeaways
- 🌟 Angiogenesis is a medical revolution that has the potential to help conquer diseases like cancer by focusing on the body's process of growing blood vessels.
- 🔍 The human body contains about 60,000 miles of blood vessels, including 19 billion capillaries, which are essential for various functions like detoxification, gas exchange, and muscle contraction.
- 🌱 Blood vessels adapt to their environment, performing different roles in different organs, and are mostly established before birth, with only a few exceptions like wound healing and pregnancy.
- 🛡️ The body regulates blood vessel growth through a balance of stimulators and inhibitors, which can be disrupted in diseases, leading to conditions like insufficient or excessive angiogenesis.
- 🏥 Angiogenesis is a hallmark of cancer, where tumors grow by forming new blood vessels to supply them with oxygen and nutrients, a process that can be targeted with anti-angiogenic therapy.
- 💊 Anti-angiogenic therapy is a novel approach to cancer treatment that differs from chemotherapy by selectively targeting the blood vessels that feed tumors.
- 🐕 This therapy has been successfully applied not only in humans but also in animals, extending survival and improving quality of life in pets with cancer.
- 🍅 Diet can play a significant role in preventing angiogenesis and, by extension, cancer, with certain foods and beverages containing natural inhibitors of angiogenesis.
- 📊 There is scientific evidence that certain dietary habits, such as consuming cooked tomatoes, can reduce the risk of developing cancer by inhibiting angiogenesis.
- 🍽️ The concept of dietary cancer prevention could have broad implications for public health, consumer education, and even the insurance industry, potentially making cancer prevention more accessible.
Q & A
What is angiogenesis and why is it significant in medical science?
-Angiogenesis is the process by which the human body grows new blood vessels. It is significant in medical science because it plays a crucial role in wound healing, the menstrual cycle, and pregnancy. Moreover, it is a key factor in the progression of diseases such as cancer, where it can lead to the growth of tumors by providing them with oxygen and nutrients.
How does the body regulate the growth of blood vessels?
-The body regulates the growth of blood vessels through a system of checks and balances involving stimulators and inhibitors of angiogenesis. When needed, stimulators like angiogenic factors are released to promote the growth of new blood vessels. Conversely, inhibitors are used to prune back excess vessels to maintain a baseline level.
What role does angiogenesis play in the development of cancer?
-Angiogenesis is a hallmark of cancer. Tumors cannot grow larger than a certain size without a blood supply. Once angiogenesis occurs, it allows tumors to grow exponentially by providing them with the necessary oxygen and nutrients. It also enables cancer cells to spread to other parts of the body through the bloodstream as metastases.
How does anti-angiogenic therapy work in the treatment of cancer?
-Anti-angiogenic therapy works by cutting off the blood supply to tumors. This treatment selectively targets the blood vessels that feed cancers, starving them of oxygen and nutrients. Since tumor blood vessels are abnormal and poorly constructed, they are highly vulnerable to treatments that target them.
What are some examples of anti-angiogenic drugs used in cancer treatment?
-Examples of anti-angiogenic drugs mentioned include Avastin, which is FDA approved, and an experimental drug for glioblastoma. These drugs have shown to reduce blood flow to tumors, thereby inhibiting their growth.
Can anti-angiogenic therapy be applied to animals as well as humans?
-Yes, anti-angiogenic therapy has been successfully applied to animals. The script mentions a 99-year-old boxer dog named Milo who was treated with a cocktail of anti-angiogenic drugs and a cream, which extended his survival time significantly.
What is the potential of using diet to prevent angiogenesis and thus cancer?
-There is potential in using diet to prevent angiogenesis and cancer. The script discusses the presence of naturally occurring inhibitors of angiogenesis in many foods, which could boost the body's defense system against cancer by inhibiting the growth of blood vessels that feed tumors.
What are some foods that have been found to have anti-angiogenic properties?
-Foods with anti-angiogenic properties mentioned in the script include red grapes (rich in Resveratrol), strawberries, soybeans, and various types of tea. These foods have been shown to inhibit angiogenesis in laboratory tests.
How does the concept of angiogenesis relate to obesity?
-The concept of angiogenesis relates to obesity because fat tissue growth is highly dependent on blood vessel growth. The script suggests that inhibiting angiogenesis could potentially be used to control or reduce fat tissue by cutting off its blood supply.
What are the broader implications of understanding and controlling angiogenesis?
-Understanding and controlling angiogenesis has broad implications for consumer education, food services, public health, and the insurance industry. It could lead to new preventative measures and treatments for diseases like cancer and obesity, and potentially influence dietary guidelines and health policies.
Outlines
🩺 Medical Revolution: Angiogenesis and Its Impact on Health
The speaker introduces the concept of angiogenesis, a medical revolution that has the potential to significantly impact the treatment of diseases like cancer. Angiogenesis refers to the body's process of growing new blood vessels, which is crucial for various bodily functions. The human body contains an extensive network of blood vessels, with the smallest being capillaries that play a vital role in health and disease. The speaker explains that while blood vessels typically do not grow in adults, there are specific circumstances such as wound healing and pregnancy where they do. The body maintains a balance of blood vessels through a system of stimulators and inhibitors. However, diseases can arise when this balance is disrupted, leading to either insufficient or excessive angiogenesis. The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding angiogenesis in combating diseases that are characterized by abnormal blood vessel growth.
🛡️ Cancer and Angiogenesis: The Role of Blood Vessels in Tumor Growth
The speaker delves into the relationship between cancer and angiogenesis, highlighting that every type of cancer is characterized by angiogenesis. Cancers begin as small cell clusters without a blood supply, limiting their growth. However, as they evolve, they can trigger angiogenesis, allowing them to grow and spread. The speaker discusses anti-angiogenic therapy, a novel approach to cancer treatment that targets the blood vessels feeding the tumors, starving them of oxygen and nutrients. This method is distinct from traditional chemotherapy and has shown promising results in various types of cancer, including in animals like dogs. The speaker shares examples of how anti-angiogenic drugs have been used to extend the lives of pets with cancer, demonstrating the potential of this therapy in treating a wide range of cancers.
🍇 Preventing Cancer Through Diet: The Power of Anti-Angiogenic Foods
The speaker explores the possibility of preventing angiogenesis and, by extension, cancer through diet. They discuss the impact of diet on cancer development, noting that diet can account for 30 to 35% of environmentally caused cancers. Instead of focusing on what to remove from the diet, the speaker suggests adding foods that are naturally anti-angiogenic to boost the body's defense against cancer. They present a test system that measures the anti-angiogenic properties of various foods and beverages, demonstrating that many common foods, such as red grapes, strawberries, and certain teas, have potent anti-angiogenic effects. The speaker proposes the idea of a rating system for foods based on their ability to prevent angiogenesis, which could help consumers make informed dietary choices to reduce their cancer risk.
🍅 Tomatoes and Cancer Prevention: The Impact of Lycopene on Angiogenesis
The speaker presents a study that shows a correlation between the consumption of cooked tomatoes and a reduced risk of prostate cancer. They explain that tomatoes are a rich source of lycopene, which has anti-angiogenic properties that can inhibit the growth of blood vessels feeding cancer cells. The study's findings suggest that not only does lycopene consumption lower the risk of developing prostate cancer, but it also reduces the angiogenesis in those who do develop the disease. The speaker emphasizes the potential of dietary interventions in cancer prevention and the importance of further research into the role of a healthy diet in managing angiogenesis-related diseases.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Angiogenesis
💡Capillaries
💡Angiogenic factors
💡Anti-angiogenic therapy
💡Cancer
💡Metastasis
💡Diet and cancer
💡Resveratrol
💡Obesity
💡Food synergy
Highlights
Angiogenesis is a medical revolution that could help conquer diseases like cancer.
The human body contains 60,000 miles of blood vessels, including 19 billion capillaries.
Blood vessels adapt to their environment, playing crucial roles in various organs.
Adults typically don't grow new blood vessels except in special circumstances like wound healing.
The body regulates blood vessel growth through a system of stimulators and inhibitors of angiogenesis.
Diseases can result from an imbalance in angiogenesis, affecting over a billion people worldwide.
Angiogenesis is a hallmark of cancer, as tumors require new blood vessels to grow.
Microscopic cancers are common but usually harmless without a blood supply.
Cancer becomes dangerous when angiogenesis occurs, allowing it to grow and metastasize.
Anti-angiogenic therapy is a new approach to cancer treatment that targets the blood supply.
Anti-angiogenic drugs have shown promise in treating various types of cancer in humans and animals.
There has been a 70 to 100% improvement in survival for some cancers with anti-angiogenic therapies.
Diet may play a significant role in cancer prevention, with 30 to 35% of cancers linked to environmental factors.
Many foods contain natural inhibitors of angiogenesis that could help prevent cancer.
A rating system is being developed to score foods based on their anti-angiogenic properties.
Eating certain foods, like tomatoes, has been shown to reduce the risk of prostate cancer.
Anti-angiogenic approaches may also have applications in treating obesity.
The potential of angiogenesis research extends to consumer education, public health, and the insurance industry.
Transcripts
[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
good
afternoon there's a medical Revolution
happening all around us and it's one
that's going to help us conquer some of
society's most dreaded conditions
including cancer and the revolution is
called
angiogenesis and it's based on the
process that our bodies use to grow
blood vessels so why should we care
about blood vessels well the human body
is literally packed with them 60,000
miles worth in a typical adult end to
end that would form a line that would
circle the Earth
twice the smallest blood vessels are
called capillaries we've got 19 billion
of them in our bodies and these are the
vessels of life and as I'll show you
they can also be the vessels of
death now the remarkable thing about
blood vessels is that they have this
ability to adapt to whatever environment
they're growing in for example in the
liver they form channels to detoxify the
blood in the lung they line air sacks
for gas exchange in muscle they cork
screw so that muscles can contract
without cutting off circulation and in
nerves they course along like power
lines keeping those nerves alive and we
get most of these blood vessels when
we're actually still in the womb and
what that means is that as adults blood
vessels don't normally grow except in a
few special
circumstances in women blood vessels
grow every month to build the lining of
the uterus during pregnancy they form
the placenta which connects mom and baby
and after injury blood vessels actually
have to grow under the scab in order to
heal a wound and this is actually what
it looks like hundreds of blood vessels
all growing towards the center of the
wound so the body has the ability to
regulate the amount of blood vessels
that are present at any given time and
it does this through an elaborate and
elegant system of checks and balances
stimulators and Inhibitors of
angiogenesis such that when we need a
brief burst of blood vessels the body
can do this by releasing stimulators
proteins called androgenic factors that
act as natural fertilizer and stimulate
New Blood vels to sprout and when those
excess vessels are no longer needed the
body prunes them back to Baseline using
naturally occurring Inhibitors of
angiogenesis now there are other
situations where we start beneath the
Baseline and we need to grow more blood
vessels just to get back to normal
levels for example after an injury and a
body can do that too but only to that
normal level that set point but what we
now know is that for a number of
diseases there are defects in the system
where the body can't prune back extra
blood vessels or can't grow enough new
ones in the right place at the right
time and in these situations Ang
androgenesis is out of balance and when
androgenesis is out of balance a myriad
of diseases result for example
insufficient androgenesis not enough
blood vessels leads to wounds that don't
heal heart attacks legs without
circulation death from stroke nerve
damage and on the other hand excessive
androgenesis too many blood vessels
drives disease and we see this in cancer
blindness arthritis obesity Alzheimer's
disease in total there are more than 70
major diseases affecting more than a
billion people worldwide that all look
on the surface to be different from one
another but all actually share abnormal
androgenesis as their common
denominator and this realization is
allowing us to reconceptualize the way
that we actually approach these diseases
by controlling
androgenesis now I'm going to focus on
cancer because androgenesis is a
Hallmark of cancer every type of cancer
so here we go this is a tumor dark gray
ominous Mass growing inside a brain and
under the microscope you can see
hundreds of these brown staining blood
vessels capillaries that are feeding
cancer cells bringing oxygen and
nutrients but cancers don't start out
like this and in fact cancers don't
start out with a blood supply they start
out as small microscopic nests of cells
that can only grow to one half a cubic
millimeter in size that's the tip of a
ballpoint pen then they can't get any
larger because they don't have a blood
supply so they don't have enough oxygen
or
nutrients and in fact we're probably
forming these microscopic cancers all
the time in our body autopsy studies uh
from people who died in car accidents
have shown that about 40% of women
between the ages of 40 and 50 actually
have microscopic cancers in their
breasts about 50% of men in their 50s
and 60s have microscopic prostate
Cancers and all virtually 100% of us by
the time we reach our 70s will have
microscopic cancers growing in our
thyroid yet without a blood supply most
of these cancers will never become
dangerous Dr Judah folman who was my
mentor and who is the Pioneer of the
androgenesis field once called this
cancer without
disease so the body's ability to balance
angiogenesis when it's working properly
prevents blood vessels from feeding
Cancers and this turns out to be one of
our most important defens mechanisms
against
cancer in fact if you actually block
androgenesis and prevent blood vessels
from ever reaching cancer cells tumors
simply can't grow up but once
angiogenesis occurs cancers can grow
exponentially and this is actually how a
cancer goes from being harmless to
deadly cancer cells mutate and they gain
the ability to release lots of those
angiogenic factors natural fertilizer
that tip the balance in favor of blood
vessels invading the cancer and once
those vessels invade the cancer it can
expand it can invade local tissues and
the same vessels that are feeding tumors
allow cancer cells to exit into the
circulation as
metastases and unfortunately this late
stage of cancer is the one at which it's
most likely to be diagnosed when
androgenesis is already turned on and
cancer cells are growing like
wild so if androgenesis is a Tipping
Point between a harmless Cancer and a
harmful one then one major part of the
angiogenesis revolution is a new
approach to treating cancer by cutting
off the blood
supply we call this anti-androgenic
therapy and it's completely different
from chemotherapy because it selectively
aims at the blood vessels that are
feeding the Cancers and we can do this
because tumor blood vessels are unlike
normal healthy vessels we see in other
places of the body they're abnormal
they're very poorly constructed and
because of that they're highly
vulnerable to treatments that Target
them in in fact when we give cancer
patients anti-angiogenic therapy here an
experimental drug for a Goma which is a
type of a brain tumor you can see that
there are dramatic changes that occur
when the tumor is being
starved here's a woman with a breast
cancer being treated with the
anti-androgenic drug called avastin
which is FDA approved and you can see
that the Halo of blood flow disappears
appears after
treatment now I've just shown you two
very different types of cancer that both
responded to antiandrogenic therapy so a
few years ago I asked myself can we take
this one step further and treat other
cancers even in other
species so here is a 99-year-old boxer
named Milo who had a very aggressive
tumor called a malignant neurofibroma
growing on his shoulder it invaded to
his lungs his veterinarian only gave him
three months to live so we created a
cocktail of anti-angiogenic drugs that
could be mixed into his dog food as well
as an anti-angiogenic cream that could
be applied on the surface of the tumor
and within a few weeks of treatment we
were able to slow down that Cancer's
growth such that we were ultimately able
to extend Milo's survival to six times
what the veterinarian had initially
predicted all with a very good quality
of life and we've subsequently treated
more than 600 dogs we have about a 60%
response rate and prove survival for
these pets that were about to be
euthanized so let me show you a couple
of even more interesting
examples this is a 20-year-old dolphin
living in Florida and she had these
lesions in her mouth that over the
course of three years developed into
invasive squa cell cancers so we created
an anti-androgenic paste we had it
painted on top of the cancer three times
a week and over the course of 7 months
the cancers completely disappeared and
the biopsies came back as
normal here's a cancer growing on a lip
of a quarter horse named Guinness it's a
very very deadly type of cancer called
an angro saroma had already spread to
his lymph nodes so we used the
anti-androgenic skin cream for the lip
and the oral cocktail so we could treat
from the inside as well as the outside
and over the course of six months he
experienced a complete
remission and here he is six years later
Guinness with his very the
owner now obviously antiandrogenic
therapy could be used for a wide range
of cancers and in fact the first
pioneering treatments for people as well
as dogs are already becoming available
there's 12 different drugs 11 different
cancer types but the real question is
how well do these work in practice so
here is actually the patient survival
data from eight different types of
cancer and the bars represent survival
time taken from the era in which there
was only chemotherapy or surgery or
radiation available but starting in
2004 when anti-androgenic therapies
first became available you can see that
there has been a 70 to 100% Improvement
in survival for people with kidney
cancer multiple Myoma colorectal cancer
and gastrointestinal stromal tumors
that's
impressive but for other tumors and
cancer types the improvements have only
been modest
so I started asking myself why haven't
we been able to do
better and the answer to me is obvious
we're treating cancer too late in the
game when it's already established and
often times it's already spread or
metastasized and as a doctor I know that
once a disease progresses to an advanced
stage achieving a cure can be difficult
if not
impossible so I went back to the biology
of Andrew Genesis and started thinking
could the answer to cancer be preventing
androgenesis beating cancer at its own
game so that cancers could never become
dangerous this could help healthy people
as well as people who have already
beaten cancer once or twice and want to
find a way to keep it from coming back
so to look for a way to prevent
androgenesis and cancer I went back to
look at Cancer's causes and what really
intrigued me was when I saw that diet
accounts for 30 to 35% of
environmentally caused
cancers now the obvious thing is to
think about what we could remove from
our diet what to strip out take away but
I actually took a completely opposite
approach and began asking what could we
be adding to our diet that's naturally
anti-angiogenic that could boost the
body's defense system and beat back
those blood vessels that are feeding
cancers in other words can we eat to
starve
cancer well the the answer is yes and
I'm going to show you how and our search
for this has taken us to the market the
farm and to the spice cabinet because
what we've discovered is that Mother
Nature has laced a large number of foods
and Beverages and herbs with naturally
occurring Inhibitors of anog
Genesis so here's a TI system we
developed uh at the center of a ring
from which hundreds of blood vessels are
growing out in a starburst fashion and
we can use this system to test dietary
factors at concentrations that are
attainable by eating
so let me show you what happens when we
put in an extract from red grapes the
active ingredients Resveratrol it's also
found in red wine this inhibits abnormal
androgenesis by
60% here's what happens when we add an
extract from
strawberries it potently inhibits
androgenesis an extract from
soybeans and here is a growing list of
our anti-androgenic foods and beverages
that we're interested in studying
and for each food type we believe that
there's different potencies within
different strains and varietals and we
want to measure this because well while
you're eating a strawberry or drinking
tea why not select the one that's most
potent for preventing cancer so here are
four different tees that we've tested
they're all common ones Chinese Jasmine
Japanese CA Earl Gray and a special
blend that we prepared and you can see
clearly that the teas vary in their
potency from less potent to more potent
but what's very cool is when we actually
combine the two less potent together the
combination the blend is more potent
than either one
alone this means there's food
Synergy here's some more data from our
testing now in the lab we can simulate
tumor angiogenesis represented here in a
black bar and using this system we can
test the potency of cancer drugs so the
shorter the bar less androgenesis that's
good and here are some common drugs that
have been associated with reducing the
risk of cancer in people statins
non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs
and a few others they inhibit
androgenesis too and here are the
dietary factors going head-to-head
against these drugs you can see they
clearly hold their own and in some cases
they're more potent than the actual
drugs soy parsley garlic grapes berries
I could go home and cook a tasty meal
using these
ingredients so imagine if we could
create the world's first rating system
in which we could score Foods according
to their anti-androgenic cancer
preventative properties and that's what
we're doing right
now now I've shown you a bunch of lab
data and so the real question is what is
the evidence in people that eating
certain foods can reduce androgenesis in
cancer
well the best example I know is this
study of 79,000 Men followed over 20
years in which it was found that men who
consumed cooked Tomatoes two to three
times a week had up to a 50% reduction
in their risk of developing prostate
cancer now we know that tomatoes are a
good source of lycopene and lycopene is
anti-androgenic but what's even more
interesting from the study is that in
those men who did develop prostate
cancer those who ate more servings of
tomato sauce
actually had fewer blood vessels feeding
their cancer so this human study is a
prime example of how anti-androgenic
substances present in food and consumed
in Practical levels can impact on cancer
and we're now studying the role of a
healthy diet with Dean ornish at UCSF
and tus University on the role of this
healthy diet on markers of angiogenesis
that we can find in the
bloodstream now obviously uh what I've
shared with you has some Far ranging
implications even Beyond cancer research
because if we're right it could impact
on consumer education Food Services
Public Health and even the insurance
industry and in fact some insurance
companies are already beginning to think
along these lines check out this ad from
Blue Cross Blue Shield of
Minnesota and for many people around the
world dietary cancer prevention may be
the only practical solution because not
everybody can afford expensive endstage
Cancer Treatments but everybody could
benefit from a healthy diet based on
local sustainable anti-androgenic
crops now finally I've talked to you
about food and I've talked you about
cancer so there's just one more disease
that I have to tell you about and that's
obesity because turns out that adapost
tissue fat is highly angiogenesis
dependent and like a tumor fat grows
when blood vessels grow so the question
is can we shrink fat by cutting off its
blood
supply so the top curve shows the body
weight of a genetically obese mouse that
eats non-stop until it turns fat like
this furry tennis
ball and the bottom curve is the weight
of a normal Mouse if you take the obese
Mouse and give it an androgenesis
inhibitor it loses weight stop the
treatment gains the weight back restart
the treatment loses the weight again
stop the treatment gains the weight back
and in fact you can cycle the weight up
and down simply by inhibiting
androgenesis so this approach that we're
taking for cancer prevention May also
have an application for
obesity the really truly interesting
thing about this is that we can't take
these obese mice and make them lose more
weight than what the normal Mouse's
weight is supposed to be in other words
we can't create super model
mice and this speaks to the role of
Andre Genesis in regulating healthy set
points Alberton Georgie once said that
Discovery consists of seeing what
everybody has seen and thinking what
nobody has thought I hope I've convinced
you that for diseases like cancer
obesity and other conditions that there
may be a great power in attacking their
common denominator Andre Genesis and
that's what I think the world needs now
thank
you I haven't few questions for you so
um these drugs aren't exactly they're
not exactly in mainstream cancer
treatments right now for anyone out here
who has cancer what would you recommend
do you recommend pursuing these
treatments now for most cancer patients
so there are anti-androgenic treatments
that are FDA approved and U if you're a
cancer patient or working with Advocate
anyone you should ask and there are many
clinical trials um the angiogenesis
foundation has followed almost 300
companies and there's about 100 more uh
drugs every the pipeline so consider the
approved ones look for clinical trials
but then between what the doctor can do
for you we need to start asking what can
we do for ourselves and this is one of
the themes that I'm talking about is we
can Empower ourselves to do the things
that doctors can't do for us which is to
use knowledge and take action and if
Mother Nature has given us some Clues we
think that there might be some a new
future in the value of how we eat and
what we eat is really our chemotherapy
three times a day right and um along
those lines for people who might have
risk factors for a cancer would you
recommend pursuing any treatment sort of
prophylactically or simply pursuing the
right diet with lots of tomato sauce
well you know there's abundant
epidemiological evidence and I think an
Information Age it doesn't take long to
go to a credible Source like pmid the
National Library of Medicine to look for
epidemiological studies for cancer risk
reduction based on diet and based on
common medications and that's certainly
something that uh anybody can look into
okay well thank you so much
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)