Customer Reviews

Nova - Cancer Warrior

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Just read Robert Cook's biography of Judah Folkman, "Dr. Folkman's WAR: Angiogenesis and the Struggle to Defeat Cancer", which was excellent. I was thinking about buying copies for my group to read, a little inspiration never hurts, but then remembered this NOVA program. I haven't seen it since it originally aired, but it impressed me (and my non-scientist significant other) at the time.

By the way, I have to disagree with the previous comment that most approved anti-cancer drugs are statins. Statins are cholesterol lowering drugs, although they may or may not have some anti-cancer activity as well. But they are not approved for cancer. Also, the recently approved drug, Avastin, is not a statin, but a monoclonal antibody targeting VEGF, a key regulator of blood vessel growth in tumors, which you will hear a lot more about in this NOVA episode.

Clear, inspiring and well narrated. This is the story of Dr. Judah Folkman's quest for a tumor growth inhibitor known as angiostatin.

The results on mouse were perfect. The ten mice the got the inibitor had their tumors resolved, while the ones that did not get the angiostatin had worsening tumors. On humans, it was a different story.. there was some success for some patients, but it was not as easy as a magic drug. Cancer is indeed complex.

However, if you read on the latest cancer drugs approved by the FDA today in 2005, you will find that most of them are statin based. A 10 year study of more than 30,000 men proved that people who take statin drugs to lower cholesterol have a lower prostate cancer risk. Breast cancer also found better numbers with statins.

The FDA just approved Avastin for colon cancer.. again this is a statin based drug.

Great true story.

Fascinating, clear, compelling story of a dedicated scientist and a radical new way to treat cancer. Everyone touched by cancer should see this film.

As a high school science teacher, I am a big fan of NOVA programs. They are always well-done and have very accurate information. However, I think this particular program was especially well-done.

Not only does the program give an excellent overview of how blood vessels can affect a tumor, but it also gives a detailed description of how the scientific method REALLY works. As teachers we often give students a very cut-and-dry version of the scientific method: first you observe, then you develop a question and hypothesis, you gather data etc... But in real life, research rarely works out in this way.

I feel the program does a really good job of presenting the following themes:
- the biology of cancer and angiogenesis (blood vessel growth)
- the nature of science (new studies build on the information learned from older studies)
- the scientific method (and how it really works)

I would highly recommend this video to other high school science teachers as well as anyone aged 15+ who is interested in learning more about cancer.