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My name is Yihai Cao.
I'm a professor working at
the Karolinska Institute,
Stockholm, Sweden.
Today, I'm going to talk about
tumor angiogenesis and
antiangiogenic therapy
for the treatment of cancer.
So this is my specialty,
vascular biology
and new blood vessel formation.
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When you look at a tumor,
in the tumor tissue,
there are really a lot
of different cells.
Not only cancer cells,
there are other cells as well,
including inflammatory cells,
immune cells,
stromal fibroblasts,
cells in the vessel wall and
even fat cells sometimes.
It is a mosaic cell
population within tumors.
Except cancer cells,
all the other cells are
collectively called
stromal cells.
So when you look at the drugs
nowadays for cancer therapy,
they can be divided
into different classes.
Class 1, that means
specifically drugs
target tumor cells,
because the tumor
cells often express
certain genes that can
be used as a target.
The problem with this
type of drugs we call
targeted therapeutics
is usually cancer cells
develop resistance
simply because
the genomes of cancer
cells are not stable.
They mutate all the time.
Within tumors, the cancer
cells are heterogeneous.
They are not one
homogeneous population,
rather different populations.
You kill one type of population,
and it can be quickly replaced
by the other population.
So there is a problem with this.
The second type of drugs are
called drugs that target
the stromal cellular
components, including
immunotherapeutics and
antiangiogenic therapy
that targets tumor
blood vessels.,
So these drugs, unlike drugs that
target tumor cells directly,
they influence the
cancer microenvironment.
By doing so, suppress
the tumor growth.
These drugs actually are much
more welcome in the clinic.
They are much more effective.
The reason for that is because
most tumors have a lot
of stromal components.
And this types of drugs
usually can treat
a broad spectrum of
different types of cancers.
This is true, for example,
for antiangiogenic therapy,
and immunotherapy has been
approved for the
treatment of a variety
of different types of cancers.
The third class is that targets
both cancer cells
and stromal cells.
For example, the conventional
chemotherapeutics,
radiation therapy that
target all of them.
I should in this
lecture briefly mention
the fourth class of
drugs that is the drugs
that target systemic
tissues and organs
may not necessarily
directly target the cancer,
but rather by changing
systemic functions
like metabolism,
inflammation, immune response
could benefit cancer patients.
