These studies define a new class of HIF-1-responsive gene, the activation of which has implications for the understanding of hypoxic tumor metabolism and which may provide endogenous markers for tumor hypoxia.
The findings also suggest that a 3p tumor suppressor gene other than VHL may also influence HIF-1alpha degradation and that there is an additional tumorigenic pathway for cRCC that does not involve VHL or HIF-1.
We conclude that HIF-1 is the regulatory link between tumor hypoxia and VEGF production in pancreatic cancer, thus establishing a biochemical pathway between tumor hypoxia and neoangiogenesis in this highly aggressive neoplasm.
HIF-1 controls cellular and systemic responses to oxygen availability and coordinates up-regulation of genes involved in many pathways concerned with tumour growth and metabolism including angiogenesis, glucose and energy metabolism, cellular proliferation, differentiation and viability, apoptosis, pH regulation and matrix metabolism.
In the majority of human tissues studied, Ndrg1 protein is overexpressed in cancers compared to normal tissues and also reflects tumour hypoxia better than HIF-1 protein.
HIF-1 activity in tumors depends on the availability of the HIF-1alpha subunit, the levels of which increase under hypoxic conditions and through the activation of oncogenes and/or inactivation of tumor suppressor genes.
The pharmacological manipulation of HIF-1 has marked effects on tumour growth, and it could prove to be an important target for drug therapy, both in cancer and in other hypoxia-dependent disease states.
Hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1), which is present at high levels in human tumors, plays crucial roles in tumor promotion by up-regulating its target genes, which are involved in anaerobic energy metabolism, angiogenesis, cell survival, cell invasion, and drug resistance.
The presence of putative HIF-1-binding sites on the promoter of human telomerase reverse transcriptase gene (hTERT) prompted us to examine the involvement of HIF-1 in the regulation of hTERT and telomerase in tumor hypoxia.
We analyzed the expressions of hexokinase II (HK II), a key enzyme in glycolysis, and VEGF in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and metastatic liver cancer in relation to tumor vascularity, and the participation of hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) was studied.
Thus, the VHL (von Hippel-Lindau) tumour suppressor gene (TSG) regulates HIF-1 and HIF-2 expression in normoxia by targeting the alpha subunits for ubiquitination and proteolysis.
Hypoxia Inducible Factor-1 (HIF-1) is an important transcription factor that stimulates tumour growth and metastases via several pathways, including angiogenesis and altered metabolism.
Upregulation of hypoxia-inducible factors HIF-1 and HIF-2 is frequent in human cancers and may result from tissue hypoxia or genetic mechanisms, in particular the inactivation of the von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) tumour suppressor gene (TSG).
Therefore, these findings provide compelling evidence that a causal relationship exists between STAT3 activation and HIF-1-dependent angiogenesis and suggest that therapeutic modalities designed to disrupt STAT3 signaling hold considerable promise for the blocking tumor growth and enhancing apoptosis of cancer cells and tissues.
Together, these findings demonstrate that hypoxic induction of Ero1-L alpha is the key adaptive response in a previously unrecognized HIF-1-mediated pathway that operates to improve protein secretion under hypoxia and might be harnessed for inhibiting tumor growth via inhibiting VEGF-driven angiogenesis.
Proinflammatory cytokines produced by tumor invading macrophages likewise activate expression of ADM. Herein, we show that apart from hypoxia, the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin 1beta (IL-1beta) induced the expression of ADM mRNA through activation of HIF-1 under normoxic conditions and enhanced the hypoxia-induced expression in the human ovarian carcinoma cell line OVCAR-3.
As a result, the net effect of HIF-1 blockade on tumor radioresponsiveness is highly dependent on treatment sequencing, with "radiation first" strategies being significantly more effective than the alternative.
Examination of tumors resistant to HIF-1alpha inhibition suggested that the resistance might result from a less hypoxic tumor environment and the level of HIF-1alpha expression in tumors may be a useful marker for predicting tumor response to HIF-1 inhibition.