Is the prostate cancer marker PSA inducing or inhibiting the growth of blood and lymphatic vessels?

What is it about?

Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is the most used cancer marker worldwide. Despite intensive research, it is not really clear what role it plays in the development of prostate cancer. Initially, it was thought that PSA inhibits blood vessel growth and therefore has a positive effect because blood vessel growth ("angiogenesis") is often associated with cancer progression. However, recent data suggests that the situation is more complicated than that. The discovery that PSA can activate Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor-C (VEGF-C) and VEGF-D opened the door for multiple scenarios in which PSA can act both as a tumor promoter and also in an inhibitory fashion, depending on which specific VEGF growth factor pattern a tumor expresses.

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Photo by Richard Horvath on Unsplash

Photo by Richard Horvath on Unsplash

Why is it important?

VEGF-C and VEGF-D inhibitors are in clinical trials and they might well be effective drugs for specific subpopulations of prostate cancer patients. The initial cancer treatment trials for these drugs have been very untargeted and they might perform well if we only would be able to identify the responsive subpopulation among all prostate cancer patients.

Perspectives