The functional responses of endothelial cells are dependent on signaling from peptide growth factors and the cellular adhesion receptors, integrins. These include cell adhesion, migration, and proliferation, which, in turn, are essential for more complex processes such as formation of the endothelial tube network during angiogenesis. This study identifies the molecular requirements for the cros...

Vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGF-A) is known to play an important role in the angiogenic response essential for tumor growth in a variety of human and experimental tumors. This study was designed to investigate whether VEGF-A may play a role in the pathogenesis of recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (RRP). A retrospective study with institutional review board approval was performed a...

background and objective: vascular endothelial growth factor (vegf) is a cytokine which is overexpressed in many malignant cancers including leukemia. vegf plays an important role in tumor invasion and metastasis. determination of the pattern of vegf expression in human leukemic cell lines could be useful not only in screening of new antileukemic agents but also to study the mechanism of their ...

BACKGROUND Vascular endothelial growth factor-D (VEGF-D) binds and activates vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2 (VEGFR-2), which signals for angiogenesis, and VEGFR-3, which signals for lymphangiogenesis. Besides endothelial cells, VEGFR-2 has been detected on malignant cells, including human breast carcinoma cells. MATERIALS AND METHODS It was examined if ectopic expression of hum...

The angiogenic response of endothelial cells initiated by different growth factors is accompanied by assembly of cell surface-bound proteolytic machinery as a prerequisite for focal invasion. We have shown previously how the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) initiates proteolysis by activation of pro-urokinase (pro-PA) via the VEGF receptor-2 (VEGFR-2). We now show that the cell surface...

background angiogenesis is an important biological process involved in the proliferation of endothelial cells, tumor growth and metastasis. vascular endothelial growth factor (vegf) is considered as a prominent regulator of angiogenesis which exerts the aforementioned effect(s) through its respective receptors (vegfr1 and vegfr2). vegf receptors are targeted as a therapeutic candidate for cance...

Although gemcitabine has been approved as the first-line chemotherapeutic reagent for pancreatic cancer, its response rate is low and average survival duration is still only marginal. Because epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR), and platelet-derived growth factor receptor (PDGFR) modulate tumor progression, we hypothesized that inhibition...

Tuftsin, Thr-Lys-Pro-Arg (TKPR), is an immunostimulatory peptide with reported nervous system effects as well. We unexpectedly found that tuftsin and a higher affinity antagonist, TKPPR, bind selectively to neuropilin-1 and block vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) binding to that receptor. Dimeric and tetrameric forms of TKPPR had greatly increased affinity for neuropilin-1 based on comp...