Endostatin plus interferon-alpha2b therapy for metastatic melanoma: a novel combination of antiangiogenic and immunomodulatory agents.

In patients with stage IIB-III disease, adjuvant high-dose interferon-alpha2b has shown clinical benefit, although metastatic melanoma is currently without any known survival-prolonging therapy. Angiogenesis has been considered important in melanoma progression, and endostatin is an angiogenesis inhibitor with antitumor activity that has shown promising results in murine model systems, prompting investigation of a formulation of rh-Endostatin (EntreMed, Rockville, Maryland, USA) alone and with interferon in metastatic melanoma. Patients were randomly assigned to receive interferon alpha2b (Schering-Plough) 10 million units/m(2) subcutaneously three times a week plus rh-Endostatin 45 mg/m(2) subcutaneously every 12 h (arm A) vs.

Synergistic activity of recombinant human endostatin in combination with adriamycin: analysis of in vitro activity on endothelial cells and in vivo tumor progression in an orthotopic murine mammary carcinoma model.

Purpose: Current combination treatment strategies in malignancy are designed to evaluate the use of cytotoxic drugs and antiangiogenic agents. Endostatin, a fragment of collagen XVIII, specifically inhibits proliferation, migration, and differentiation of endothelial cells in vitro as well as angiogenesis and tumor progression in in vivo models. In this study, we determine the antitumor effect of rhEndostatin administered alone or in combination with Adriamycin against established orthotopic murine mammary carcinoma.