The reasons behind failure of blood vessel growth in an organised and functional manner in most disease settings remain partially unclear, but tumour expansion and metastatic spread can be attributed to the corrupted growth for the case of cancer. Previous studies found that a secreted glycoprotein LRG1 has a role to play in the promotion of dysfunctional vessel growth, which may contribute to the vascular dysfunction that comes common in cancer. A study investigated on this and the findings proved the effects of LRG1 on the vasculature of tumours and improvement in vessel structure and function by inhibiting its function with a blocking antibody in mouse models. The vascular normalisation strategy enhanced the efficacy of cisplatin chemotherapy, adoptive T cell therapy, and immune checkpoint inhibition therapy, eventually resulting in tumour growth suppression and improvement in survival. The research team is now ready to proceed to clinical trials in human patients upon the development of human version of LRG1 inhibitor named Magacizumab.

References

2. O’Connor MN, et al. MED. Nov 2021.