Do anti-angiogenic cancer therapies increase risk of significant weight loss?

Abstract

Introduction: Angiogenesis is important in many disease states such as cancer. Anti-angiogenic cancer drugs are in broad use for the treatment of cancers. However, currently most of these anticancer drugs result in some adverse effects in the patient.

Areas covered: In this paper, we review evidence on the association between anti-angiogenic therapies and weight loss. We report on basic experiments and clinical trials that measure weight loss with anti-angiogenic cancer therapies.

Expert opinion: Few strong associations are found between anti-angiogenic cancer therapies and weight loss, with the exception of some multikinase inhibitors in clinical trials. Anti-angiogenic cancer therapies appear safe in relation to weight loss, but the result needs to be established by further clinical trials.

Keywords::

• anti-angiogenesis
• cancer therapy
• drug safety
• weight loss

Acknowledgement

S Zhang and M Yu contributed equally to this work.

Declaration of interest

This work was funded by the National Key Basic Research Program (973 Program) of China (2010CB529900). The authors do not have any conflict of interest to declare.

Notes

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