Inducing angiogenesis: an Hallmark too far?
By
Prof. Francesco Pezzella
University of Oxford, UK
The term angiogenesis was coined in 1787 and the role of vessels in cancer has being studied since. In 1971 Folkman introduced the hypothesis, until now widely accepted, that tumour growth is angiogenesis dependent. However, the discovery that cancer can also grow without angiogenesis, by co-opting pre existing vessels both in humans and in mice models, has demonstrated that this is not always the case. The observation that cancer cells can exploit pre-existing vessels provides a new aspect of the interaction between host and tumours and open a new field in cancer biology.