State Key Laboratory of Oncology, South China, Sir YK Pao Center for Cancer, Department of Clinical Oncology, Hong Kong Cancer Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR.
Anticancer Drugs. 2011 Aug;22(7):665-73. doi: 10.1097/CAD.0b013e328341879d.
Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) represents a devastating type of malignancy characterized by its high incidence of regional and distant metastases at the time of diagnosis. Vital physiological functions in the upper aerodigestive tract are often impaired as a result of the disease and treatment for the disease, giving rise to severe morbidity in patients suffering from this type of cancer. It is crucial to delineate the aberrant growth signaling pathways in HNSCC cells and develop specific target therapies for the disease to improve the treatment outcome. Although the epidermal growth factor receptor pathway has been extensively studied in HNSCC and anti-epidermal growth factor receptor therapy has already shown promise in treating HNSCC in phase III clinical trials, the signaling pathway that accounts for the highly invasive phenotype of HNSCC needs to be defined and also therapeutically targeted. The hepatocyte growth factor-MET signaling pathway has been studied extensively over the past two decades and it is now clear that it plays an important role in mediating invasive growth of many types of cancer. Here, we review comprehensively the evidence on hepatocyte growth factor-MET cascade being a key in the signaling pathway in mediating invasive growth of HNSCC and the potential of this signaling pathway to be a therapeutic target for the treatment of HNSCC.
头颈部鳞状细胞癌 (HNSCC) 是一种具有破坏性的恶性肿瘤，其特点是在诊断时就有很高的区域和远处转移率。由于疾病和治疗，上呼吸道的重要生理功能常常受损，导致患有这种癌症的患者严重发病。阐明 HNSCC 细胞中异常生长的信号通路，并开发针对该疾病的特异性靶向治疗方法，对于改善治疗效果至关重要。尽管表皮生长因子受体途径在 HNSCC 中已得到广泛研究，并且抗表皮生长因子受体治疗已在 III 期临床试验中显示出治疗 HNSCC 的前景，但仍需要确定并治疗靶向导致 HNSCC 高度侵袭表型的信号通路。在过去的二十年中，肝细胞生长因子-MET 信号通路已得到广泛研究，现在很清楚它在介导多种癌症的侵袭性生长中起着重要作用。在这里，我们全面回顾了肝细胞生长因子-MET 级联作为介导 HNSCC 侵袭性生长的信号通路中的关键的证据，以及该信号通路作为治疗 HNSCC 的治疗靶点的潜力。
