Immune system molecule promotes tumor resistance to anti-angiogenic therapy
The findings by Ferrara — professor of pathology at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and senior deputy director for basic science at the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center — and colleagues at Genentech, a biotechnology firm based in South San Francisco, are published in the August 4 Advance Online Publication of the journal Nature Medicine. Angiogenesis is a physiological process in which new blood vessels form from existing vessels. It is fundamental to early development and wound healing, but some cancer tumors exploit angiogenesis to promote blood vessel growth and fuel a tumor’s transition from a benign to a malignant state. In the late 1980s, Ferrara led efforts to identify a key gene (VEGF) involved in angiogenesis and subsequent development of the first drugs to block VEGF-mediated growth in a variety of cancers, among them lung, kidney, brain and colorectal. …