Oncology Unit GPP, Sotiria General Hospital, Athens School of Medicine, Athens, Greece.
Cancer Chemother Pharmacol. 2013 Dec;72(6):1169-81. doi: 10.1007/s00280-013-2298-3. Epub 2013 Oct 2.
Lung cancer is a disease whose prognosis has remained poor in the last decades. Recent advances in the understanding of the molecular pathways behind this disease have revealed several mediators of important tumor functions. One of these functions is angiogenesis, which is considered essential for tumor growth and propagation, and a key mediator promoting this process is the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). In lung cancer, VEGF plays a significant role in establishing a vascular supply within the tumor. Thus, a new class of drugs has emerged, targeting its pathway, which has offered substantial, albeit small, improvements in patient prognosis.
The VEGF pathway and its role in a multitude of different human cancers are presented at first. We then proceed by analyzing its importance in lung cancer and exploring the therapeutic benefits achieved by its targeting, which set new goals for the future.
Today, the VEGF pathway remains an attractive target for anticancer treatment, and the way forward requires detection of predictive markers and efforts for a more complete angiogenic blockade.
在过去几十年中，肺癌的预后一直很差。近年来，人们对这种疾病背后的分子途径的理解有了深入的了解，揭示了几个对肿瘤重要功能起介导作用的因子。其中一个功能是血管生成，这被认为是肿瘤生长和扩散所必需的，而促进这一过程的一个关键介质是血管内皮生长因子（VEGF）。在肺癌中，VEGF 在肿瘤内建立血管供应中起着重要作用。因此，出现了一类新的药物，靶向其通路，这为患者的预后带来了实质性的、尽管很小的改善。
首先介绍了 VEGF 通路及其在多种人类癌症中的作用。然后，我们分析了它在肺癌中的重要性，并探讨了靶向治疗所带来的治疗益处，这为未来设定了新的目标。
今天，VEGF 通路仍然是癌症治疗的一个有吸引力的靶点，未来的发展方向需要检测预测标志物，并努力实现更完全的血管生成阻断。
