Angiogenesis and Its Role in Cancer Therapy

Author: Longevity Medical

Angiogenesis is the process by which new blood vessels are formed to provide an increased blood supply to oxygen-hungry tissue within the body. This can be beneficial in cases such as heart disease, where an occluded artery doesn't meet the oxygen demands of the heart muscle. These new blood vessels can provide a collateral system of blood flow to bypass the occlusion and also provide the needed oxygen. In addition, it can be beneficial as an alternative cancer treatment, and is often used as a method of cancer therapy.

Angiogenesis is also a part of the neoplastic process. Tumors, like any metabolic tissue, require an increasing supply of resources as they grow. These resources are delivered to the tumor via the blood, and thus growth requires additional delivery of blood.

How Angiogenesis Works

The angiogenic process has been a target as a form of cancer therapy for a number of years. Some cancer types, such as renal cell cancer, are known to be highly vascular and therefore should be responsive to anti-angiogenic treatments. Other cancers including some breast cancers and colorectal cancers are also treated with anti-angiogenic drugs as a form of cancer therapy

    Read also : Eating tips for cancer patients

The drugs used to inhibit new blood vessel growth do so by blocking the signaling pathway used to promote new vessel formation. This signal is called Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor, or VEGF. VEGF in the body connects to a docking receptor known as VEGF-R, which is found on the surface of some cell types- notably the endothelial cells that comprise the blood vessels. When a bodily tissue has increased need for blood and other blood-delivered substances, the local concentration of VEGF increases. This VEGF then binds with the VEGF-R docking sites on nearby blood vessels, which then respond by growing towards the source of the VEGF signal. Drugs used to block this process do so by docking in the VEGF-R receptor and physically blocking VEGF from doing so.

Using Tetrathiomolybdate

Recently there has been interest in stopping the angiogenic process, not by physically blocking the VEFG receptors, but by restricting the resources needed to build the new blood vessels. Angiogenesis requires that certain substances be available in order to occur. One of these resources is the mineral copper. A newer strategy for inhibiting neoplastic blood vessel formation is to remove the available copper from within the body. Using the drug tetrathiomolybdate, which binds to copper and eliminates it from the body, does this. When copper levels drop angiogenesis is inhibited. The research regarding copper restriction as an anti-cancer therapy is still growing, and it is producing some interesting findings. For example, research has shown that a person's copper level, measured by determining the level of the copper-binding protein ceruloplasmin, can be prognostic of recurrence in some cancers. So, monitoring ceruloplasmin levels may provide some useful information about the likelihood of recurrence in some cases.

The use of tetrathiolmolybdate has also shown some promising results as an alternative cancer treatment in a typically difficult to treat type of breast cancer known as triple negative breast cancer. This type of breast cancer is characterized by its initial responsiveness to traditional cancer therapy, such as chemotherapy, but unfortunately also by its extremely high rate of recurrence. Recent research found that the use of tetrathiolmolybdate in women with high-risk triple negative breast cancer reduced levels of a cell type linked with relapse, leading to improved relapse-free survival.

Treatment with tetratiolmolybdate has also shown benefit in other cancers such as head and neck cancer, where it was found to prevent metastasis by suppressing angiogenesis. Studies with esophageal cancer have also provided some positive results. Tetrathiolmolybdate is also showing some promise as a way to increase the sensitivity of some cancers, like ovarian cancer, to the action of chemotherapy drugs.

Using tetrathiolmolybdate is generally very safe and easy to administer. It however does have the potential to cause some adverse effect, mainly a lowering of red and white blood cells within the body. As this sort of adverse effect is also commonly seen with traditional chemotherapy drugs, the combined use may exacerbate the negative effects. When beginning this kind of cancer therapy it is also important to have close monitoring to make sure that safe and effective levels of copper reduction are achieved.


Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/cancer-articles/angiogenesis-and-its-role-in-cancer-therapy-7172188.html

About the Author
We are Longevity Medical Health Center, and we are dedicated to improving the lives of our patients by providing high quality individualized health care