Short-term anti-vascular endothelial growth factor treatment elicits vasculogenic mimicry formation of tumors to accelerate metastasis

Background: antiangiogenic therapy is one of the most significant advances in anticancer treatment. the benefits of antiangiogenic therapies of late-stage cancers have been investigated but are still too limited. methods. we used an ovarian cancer model to test the effect of short-term bevacizumab treatment on metastasis as measured by bioluminescence. western blotting and cd34-pas dual staining were performed to assess hypoxia-inducible transcription factor-1 (hif-1) expression and vasculogenic mimicry(vm) formation. cell viability was examined by a cck8 assay. results: bevacizumab demonstrated antitumor effects in models of ovarian cancer,but also accelerated metastasis together,with marked hypoxia and vm formation in mice receiving short-term therapy. bevacizumab treatment did not affect skov3 cell viability and the amount of vm in three-dimensional culture. conclusion: these results suggest that antiangiogenic therapy may potentially influence the progression of metastatic disease,which has been linked to the hypoxic response and vm formation. © 2012 yuan et al; licensee biomed central ltd.