This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Oncology  • Oncology, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Carolyn J. Hildreth, MD

JAMA. 2009;301(1):26.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Evidence that angiogenesis, the development of new blood vessels, is important for tumor progression prompted interest in drugs that inhibit angiogenesis-promoting proteins, such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Now, however, researchers from the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla, have discovered VEGF-blocking drugs may actually accelerate tumor cell growth (Stockmann C et al. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature07445 [published online ahead of print November 9, 2008]).

New blood vessels that feed tumors form dense networks and become disorganized and leaky. However, the researchers found that in tumor-prone mice that lack the gene-encoding VEGF, such vessels were more organized, less leaky, and sparser than those of mice with intact genes. The tumors in the VEGF-deficient mice also were larger and appeared to be at a later stage of cancer, but these tumors also were more vulnerable to the effects of standard chemotherapy drugs.

The new . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?