Tumors require the formation of new blood vessels termed, angiogenesis, to grow.
Targeting angiogenesis provides a novel approach for cancer therapy that rivals conventional therapy since drug resistance and tissue toxicity issues are avoided. The ability to alter this balance by favoring the anti-angiogenic effect by treatment with exogenous endostatin and angiostatin has been successfully demonstrated. However, a major difficulty in translating these strategies to the clinic is the lack of large quantities of these peptides for long-term treatment. An alternative strategy to disturb this balance is to disrupt VEGF or other angiogenic factor production. Since VEGF is a potent mitogen for vascular endothelial cells this response represents a means to quickly develop new blood vessels to bring oxygenated red blood cells and rescue the stressed tissue.