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Most people thought they were hearing about a new breakthrough. In fact, Folkman's work on angiostatin and endostatin had been reported months before in scientific journals and just a few weeks ago in Business Week. A November article in Nature briefly boosted EntreMed's stock 28%, to $15.25 per share. But of course that was nothing compared with last week, when the stock rocketed past $80 before eventually dropping to $33.25 at Friday's close.
As the week wore on, further complications emerged. In a letter to the Times, Watson denied his remarks. "I sat next to [Kolata] at a meeting at UCLA six weeks ago," he told TIME. "She never took any notes." He says he did not tell her that cancer would be cured in two years, although he did communicate his excitement about Folkman's research.
Kolata stood by her story--as did the Times. "We are entirely comfortable with the coverage and the placement of the article," says Nancy Nielsen, a spokesperson for the newspaper. As for Watson's quote: "We don't wish to get into a quarrel with a respected scientist, but we are confident in the accuracy of our story."
But things soon got worse for Kolata. On Wednesday the Los Angeles Times suggested that her enthusiasm for Folkman's work might have been influenced by a potential book deal. She had, in fact, at the urging of her agent John Brockman, dashed off an e-mail message that Brockman told her could, in the hands of the right publisher, be worth a cool $2 million. But after meeting with her editors on Tuesday, Kolata quashed any idea of writing a book. "I did not plan a book," she says. "I did not write anything that anyone could remotely consider to be a proposal, and any idea was immediately withdrawn."
Then the New York Post reported that Folkman would share in a $1 million book deal with Random House. Flat wrong, says Random House. It is true that the publisher has tapped science writer Robert Cooke of Newsday to produce a book about Folkman's life and cancer research and that Folkman has agreed to cooperate with the project. But the scientist won't get any money from the deal.
What he will get is some hard-won recognition for having single-handedly created the field of angiogenesis. Back in the 1970s, when conventional wisdom among cancer researchers was that most tumors are caused by viruses, Folkman was pursuing his own, very different insight. He noticed that when cancer cells are still tiny--only a millimeter or two across--they don't need any blood vessels to survive. In order to grow to life-threatening size, however, they need blood. And they get that blood by persuading nearby capillaries to reach out and touch them.
Virtually alone in the scientific community, Folkman decided it would be easier to try to kill a tumor by destroying its blood supply than by attacking it directly. His reasoning was sound. Tumors are made up of rapidly dividing mutant cells that adapt quickly to almost any treatment thrown at them. Blood vessels, by contrast, are made up of normal cells that grow much more slowly and are nowhere near as difficult to outwit. Hoping to starve tumors through their supply line of nutrients, Folkman set out to find a drug that could block the construction of new blood vessels.