The Clinical Significance of Hypoxia in Human Cancers

Hypoxia is present to some extent in most solid malignant human cancers because of an imbalance between the limited oxygen delivery capacity of the abnormal vasculature and the high oxygen consumption of tumor cells. This drives a complex and dynamic compensatory response to enable continued cell survival, including genomic changes leading to selection of hypoxia-adapted cells with a propensity to invade locally, metastasize, and recur following surgery or radiotherapy. There is indisputable clinical evidence from numerous observational and therapeutic studies across a range of tumor types to implicate hypoxia as a key determinant of cancer behavior and treatment outcome.
Source: Seminars in Nuclear Medicine - Category: Nuclear Medicine Authors: Source Type: research