ONE of cancer鈥檚 survival strategies could be its Achilles鈥� heel, say David
Livingston and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Many tumours have a poor blood supply, so they lack oxygen. To compensate,
they switch on a gene called HIF-1, which helps them adapt their
metabolism and promotes the growth of blood vessels. Livingston鈥檚 team designed
a small protein that blocks the activity of HIF-1, and added it to
human cancer cells using retroviruses. The protein reduced the growth of the
tumours when they were transplanted into mice (Nature Medicine, vol 6,
p 1335).
鈥淚t amounts to proof in principle,鈥� says Peter Ratcliffe of the Wellcome
Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford. The next step is to develop drugs
that mimic the effects of the protein, he adds.
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