Vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 3 is involved in tumor angiogenesis and growth.
Vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 3 ( VEGFR-3) binds VEGF-C and VEGF-D and is essential for the development of the lymphatic vasculature. Experimental tumors that overexpress VEGFR-3 ligands induce lymphatic vessel sprouting and enlargement and show enhanced metastasis to regional lymph nodes and beyond, whereas a soluble form of VEGFR-3 that blocks receptor signaling inhibits these changes and metastasis. Because VEGFR-3 is also essential for the early blood vessel development in embryos and is up-regulated in tumor angiogenesis, we wanted to determine if an antibody targeting the receptor that interferes with VEGFR-3 ligand binding can inhibit primary tumor growth. Our results show that antibody interference with VEGFR-3 function can inhibit the growth of several human tumor xenografts in immunocompromised mice. Immunohistochemical analysis showed that the blood vessel density of anti- VEGFR-3-treated tumors was significantly decreased and hypoxic and necrotic tumor tissue was increased when compared with tumors treated with control antibody, indicating that blocking of the VEGFR-3 pathway inhibits angiogenesis in these tumors. As expected, the anti- VEGFR-3-treated tumors also lacked lymphatic vessels. These results suggest that the VEGFR-3 pathway contributes to tumor angiogenesis and that effective inhibition of tumor progression may require the inhibition of multiple angiogenic targets.[1]References
- Vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 3 is involved in tumor angiogenesis and growth. Laakkonen, P., Waltari, M., Holopainen, T., Takahashi, T., Pytowski, B., Steiner, P., Hicklin, D., Persaud, K., Tonra, J.R., Witte, L., Alitalo, K. Cancer Res. (2007) [Pubmed]
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