open access: BJC - Targeted anti-vascular therapies for ovarian cancer: current evidence

British Journal of Cancer - Targeted anti-vascular therapies for ovarian cancer: current evidence

"..........Anti-angiogenic agents such as VEGF/PDGF/FGF inhibitors have been developed, of which the most successful to date is bevacizumab, a humanised monoclonal antibody that inhibits the binding of VEGF to its receptors, VEGFR-1 and VEGFR-2. Neutralising the biological activity of VEGF inhibits the formation of new tumour vessels, causing regression of the remaining tumour vasculature. This slows tumour growth and metastasis (Jain, 2005). Preclinical and early clinical studies show resistance to VEGF inhibition occurring quite quickly and pure VEGF inhibitors such as bevacizumab are best used in conjunction with chemotherapy. However, in contrast to most other anti-vascular agents (Rustin et al, 2003), bevacizumab has shown single-agent activity in ovarian cancer (Burger et al, 2007; Cannistra et al, 2007), but not in many other solid tumour types (Cobleigh et al, 2003; Sandler et al, 2006; Giantonio et al, 2007)...........