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The growth of new blood vessels. A tumour bigger than a pinhead needs its own blood supply and sends out signals (mainly VEGF) to recruit one; anti-angiogenic drugs cut that supply.
Starved of oxygen, tumour cells switch on the HIF transcription factor and secrete VEGF and other growth factors that make nearby blood vessels sprout towards them; the resulting vessels are leaky and disorganised, which raises pressure inside the tumour and hampers drug delivery. 'Inducing angiogenesis' is one of the hallmarks of cancer, and drugs that block VEGF (bevacizumab) or its receptors (sunitinib, lenvatinib, cabozantinib) are standard in kidney, liver, colorectal and other cancers, though they slow rather than cure. Normalising rather than destroying tumour vessels may improve delivery of chemotherapy and immune cells, and VEGF also suppresses immune cells, which is one rationale for combining anti-angiogenics with immunotherapy.
In plain words · The signal tumours use to grow their own blood supply. Blocking it starves tumours and, surprisingly, helps immunotherapy work.
Showing the target this term concerns: VEGF / VEGFR.
This review is the standard map of the tumour microenvironment and the reason microenvironment-directed drugs, from anti-angiogenics to macrophage and fibroblast targeting agents, are developed alongside tumour-cell-directed ones.
The first time a targeted biological agent extended survival in lung cancer, and the first time median survival in the advanced setting crossed twelve months. It also set the pattern that a drug's exclusion criteria can matter as much as its mechanism.
Shares Hallmark: inducing or accessing vasculature, VHL / HIF oxygen sensing, HIF-2α, VEGF angiogenesis.
Shares VHL / HIF oxygen sensing, HIF-2α, Belzutifan, VEGF / VEGFR.
Shares VHL / HIF oxygen sensing, HIF-2α, Belzutifan.
Shares VHL / HIF oxygen sensing, HIF-2α, Belzutifan.
Shares Growth factor, VEGF / VEGFR, Anti-angiogenic therapy.
Shares Hallmark: inducing or accessing vasculature, VEGF / VEGFR, Anti-angiogenic therapy.
Shares VHL / HIF oxygen sensing, HIF-2α, Belzutifan.
Shares VHL / HIF oxygen sensing, HIF-2α, VEGF angiogenesis, Belzutifan.