Current Molecular Medicine - Volume 9, Issue 8, 2009

Thirty-eight years ago when Judah Folkman proposed the first hypothesis of antiangiogenic cancer therapy, he and others had not fully appreciated the impact of pathological angiogenesis on contribution to the onset, development, and progression of the most common and severe human diseases. Folkman's original hypothesis, however, has revolutionized our thinking of development of novel therapeutic approaches for th Read More

Angiogenesis is a major factor in the development of benign, inflammatory, and malignant processes of the skin. Endothelial cells are the effector cells of angiogenesis, and understanding their response to growth factors and inhibitors is critical to understanding the pathogenesis and treatment of skin disease. Hemangiomas, benign tumors of endothelial cells, represent the most common tumor of childhood. In our previous studi Read More

Angiogenesis plays an established role in the growth promotion of dormant micrometastasis, because blood vessels deliver oxygen and nutrients into the tumor microenvironment. A discrete event termed “the angiogenic switch” has been recognized as key in promoting the transition towards a clinically aggressive tumor. This concept generally describes a permanent change in the angiogenic capacity of the tumor sustained b Read More

We have reviewed physiological significance of rhythmical spontaneous contractions of collecting lymphatics, which play an important role in lymph transport and seem to regulate lymph formation through changing the pacemaker sites of the rhythmic contractions and conractile patterns of lymphangions. Next, we reported experimental findings that the wall effective permeability of hydrophilic substances labelled with fluore Read More

Anti-angiogenic therapy has fundamentally landmarked the clinical new era of anti-cancer therapy. It was demonstrated that the blockade of vascular endothelial growth factor results in regression of the disease and prolongation of survival. In contrast, it was clarified that the differential sensitivity of the therapeutic impact exists. Many thought-provoking questions have been raised in this field. Herein, we focus on the clini Read More

The idea of delivery of proangiogenic factors to the ischemic region of myocardium or skeletal muscles was proposed more than 30 years ago and abundant preclinical data validate this concept. However, clinical experience with this approach has generally produced unfulfilled promises. Although reestablishment of functional collateral networks for improvement of blood perfusion in ischemic tissues is an undisputed conc Read More

The leading cause of blindness in the developed world results from several disorders that have pathologic ocular neovascularization as the common pathway leading to vision loss. These disorders include exudative age related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy (DR), retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), retinal vein occlusions (RVO) and ocular tumors. Because neovascularization is the common pathway to blindness Read More

Angiogenesis research has become one of the most important areas in biomedical research. At the time of writing this review, there were approximately 3536 articles published in the year of 2008 alone on the topic of angiogenesis. The fast expansion of this research field demands development of rigorous, reliable, stable, convenient, and clinically relevant assay systems for disease diagnosis, prognosis, therapeutic Read More

Multiple sclerosis is a disease of the central nervous system that predmoninantly affects young adults. The pathogenic mechanisms are complex, however numerous studies indicate that the disease is initiated by an autoimmune attack on protein targets present in the central nervous system. Given that a dysfunctional immune system perpetuates the pathophysiological mechanisms that characterize this inflammatory disorder Read More

Combining groundbreaking research and developments in cancer biomarkers, nanotechnology and molecular targeted medicine, a new realm of therapy is possible: personalized and predictive medicine. Developing a method to detect the overexpression of several tumor marker genes simultaneously, knowing that a single cell generally expresses more than one altered gene, should have a high predictive value for ident Read More