Further pharmacological and genetic evidence for the efficacy of PlGF inhibition in cancer and eye disease

Abstract

Our findings that PlGF is a cancer target and anti-PlGF is useful for anticancer treatment have been challenged by Bais et al. Here we take advantage of carcinogen-induced and transgenic tumor models as well as ocular neovascularization to report further evidence in support of our original findings of PlGF as a promising target for anticancer therapies. We present evidence for the efficacy of additional anti-PlGF antibodies and their ability to phenocopy genetic deficiency or silencing of PlGF in cancer and ocular disease but also show that not all anti-PlGF antibodies are effective. We also provide additional evidence for the specificity of our anti-PlGF antibody and experiments to suggest that anti-PlGF treatment will not be effective for all tumors and why. Further, we show that PlGF blockage inhibits vessel abnormalization rather than density in certain tumors while enhancing VEGF-targeted inhibition in ocular disease. Our findings warrant further testing of anti-PlGF therapies.