近年来儿童癌症的治疗取得了长足进步，但依然存在很多儿童肿瘤类型无法医治。在线发表于爱思唯尔期刊《癌症治疗评论》（Cancer Treatment Reviews）的一篇文章，报道了以组织缺氧作为药物标靶治疗儿童癌症的新方法。
目前，人们普遍认为肿瘤部位组织缺氧是导致治疗失败和多种成人恶性肿瘤的罪魁祸首。组织缺氧被认为抵制了放射疗法和化疗，导致肿瘤细胞内部的适应性变化，由此引起新的血管发生和程序性细胞死亡。
组织缺氧有很多的不良影响，但科学家同时还发现，如果能够以组织缺氧为药物标靶，那么战胜癌症的希望就大大增加了。缺氧诱导因子1（HIF-1）是最具吸引力的药物标靶，而且HIF-1抑制剂已经显示出了一些治疗效果。研究人员认为，如果能够研究出专门攻击这种肿瘤的药物，儿童恶性肿瘤的治疗将取得更大的进步。
该文章表明，组织缺氧为肿瘤治疗提供了一种潜在的治疗靶标，这将有助于彻底攻克儿童癌症。（科学网 荔涛/编译）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
（Cancer Treatment Reviews），doi:10.1016/j.ctrv.2007.11.005，J.K. Adamski, G.W.J. Makin
The cellular adaptations to hypoxia as novel therapeutic targets in childhood cancer
J.K. Adamskia, E.J. Estlinb, and G.W.J. Makin
Summary
Exposure of tumour cells to reduced levels of oxygen (hypoxia) is a common finding in adult tumours. Hypoxia induces a myriad of adaptive changes within tumour cells which result in increased anaerobic glycolysis, new blood vessel formation, genetic instability and a decreased responsiveness to both radio and chemotherapy. Hypoxia correlates with disease stage and outcome in adult epithelial tumours and increasingly it is becoming apparent that hypoxia is also important in paediatric tumours. Despite its adverse effects upon tumour response to treatment hypoxia offers several avenues for new drug development. Bioreductive agents already exist, which are preferentially activated in areas of hypoxia, and thus have less toxicity for normal tissue. Additionally the adaptive cellular response to hypoxia offers several novel targets, including vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), carbonic anhydrase, and the central regulator of the cellular response to hypoxia, hypoxia inducible factor-1 (HIF-1). Novel agents have emerged against all of these targets and are at various stages of clinical and pre-clinical development. Hypoxia offers an exciting opportunity for new drug development that can include paediatric tumours at an early stage.
