Folkman Judah
Childrens Hospital and Harvard Medical School Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2007 Apr;6(4):273-86. doi: 10.1038/nrd2115.
Angiogenesis--the process of new blood-vessel growth--has an essential role in development, reproduction and repair. However, pathological angiogenesis occurs not only in tumour formation, but also in a range of non-neoplastic diseases that could be classed together as 'angiogenesis-dependent diseases'. By viewing the process of angiogenesis as an 'organizing principle' in biology, intriguing insights into the molecular mechanisms of seemingly unrelated phenomena might be gained. This has important consequences for the clinical use of angiogenesis inhibitors and for drug discovery, not only for optimizing the treatment of cancer, but possibly also for developing therapeutic approaches for various diseases that are otherwise unrelated to each other.
血管生成——新血管生长的过程——在发育、生殖和修复中起着至关重要的作用。然而，病理性血管生成不仅发生在肿瘤形成过程中，还发生在一系列可归类为“血管生成依赖性疾病”的非肿瘤性疾病中。通过将血管生成过程视为生物学中的“组织原则”，可能会对看似不相关现象的分子机制获得有趣的见解。这对血管生成抑制剂的临床应用和药物发现具有重要意义，不仅有助于优化癌症治疗，还可能为开发针对各种原本互不相关疾病的治疗方法提供帮助。
