Dual HER/VEGF receptor targeting inhibits in vivo ovarian cancer tumor growth
Menée à l'aide de xénogreffes, cette étude suggère qu'une stratégie basée sur l'inhibition simultanée des récepteurs HER et VEGFR pourrait être utile pour le traitement de certains sous-groupes de tumeurs de l'ovaire
Ovarian cancer mortality ranks highest among all gynecological cancers with growth factor pathways playing an integral role in tumorigenesis, metastatic dissemination and therapeutic resistance. The human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER) and vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR) are both overexpressed and/or aberrantly activated in subsets of ovarian tumors. While agents targeting either the HER or VEGF pathways alone have been investigated, the impact of these agents have not led to overall survival benefit in ovarian cancer. We tested the hypothesis that co-targeting HER and VEGFR would maximize anti-tumor efficacy at tolerable doses. To this end, ovarian cancer xenografts grown intraperitoneally in athymic nude mice were tested in response to AC480 (pan HER inhibitor, "HERi"), cediranib (pan VEGFR inhibitor "VEGFRi"), or BMS-690514 (combined HER/VEGFR inhibitor "EVRi"). EVRi was superior to both HERi and VEGFRi in terms of tumor growth, final tumor weight and progression-free survival. Correlative tumor studies employing phosphoproteomic antibody arrays revealed distinct agent-specific alterations, with EVRi inducing the greatest overall effect on growth factor signaling. These data suggest that simultaneous inhibition of HER and VEGFR may benefit select subsets of ovarian cancer tumors. To this end, we derived a novel HER/VEGF signature that correlated with poor overall survival in high-grade, late stage, serous ovarian cancer patient tumors.
http://mct.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2013/10/15/1535-7163.MCT-13-0547.abstract