Abstract

The creation of the term angiogenesis goes back to 1787 [1] and the role of vessels in cancer has being studied since. In 1971 Folkman [2] introduced the hypothesis, until now widely accepted, that tumour growth is angiogenesis dependent [3]. However, the discovery that cancer can also grow without angiogenesis, by co-opting pre-existing vessels both in humans [4-7] and in mice [8] has demonstrated that this is not always the case. The observation that cancer cells can exploit pre-existing vessels provides a new aspect of the interaction between host and tumors, sheds new light on the biology of the latter and has implications for resistance to antiangiogenic drugs and development of new vascular targeting strategies.

Keywords: Cancer; Blood vessels; Co-option; Angiogenesis; Non-angiogenic tumours