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  • Milestones
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Milestone 7

Bloodlines

Angiogenesis

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 6, pages S10–S11 (2006)Cite this article

In 1939, Gordon Ide and colleagues adapted a technique to study the growth of blood vessels around tumour tissue transplanted into the rabbit ear. Observing robust tumour growth and induction of a complex vascular network, they made the seminal suggestion that tumours might produce a 'vessel growth- stimulating substance'. In 1945, Glenn Algire and colleagues furthered these studies by a detailed kinetic analysis of the vascular response to tumour transplants. They postulated that the growth advantage of a tumour cell over its normal counterpart might not be owing to “some hypothetical capacity for autonomous growth inherent within the [tumour] cell,” but rather to its ability to continuously induce angiogenesis — that is, the formation of new blood vessels. This insightful conclusion presaged the realization that a tumour would not efficaciously grow in the absence of a blood supply and, therefore, that inhibiting development of the tumour vasculature could be exploited as a therapeutic strategy.

In 1968, Melvin Greenblatt and Philippe Shubik showed that tumour transplants stimulated the proliferation of blood vessels even when a physical barrier — a Millipore filter — was placed between the tumour and the host stroma. They concluded that the vessel growth-stimulating substance of Ide and co-workers was a true diffusible substance that could, in theory, be identified. In 1971, Judah Folkman and colleagues isolated just such a 'tumour angiogenic factor (TAF)' from tumour extracts, and proposed that the growth of malignancies might be prevented if TAF activity were blocked.

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    Alison Farrell

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Farrell, A. Bloodlines. Nat Rev Cancer 6 (Suppl 1), S10–S11 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc1849

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