Tumour PDGF-BB expression levels determine dual effects of anti-PDGF drugs on vascular remodelling and metastasis

Anti-platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) drugs are routinely used in front-line therapy for the treatment of various cancers, but the molecular mechanism underlying their dose-dependent impact on vascular remodelling remains poorly understood. Here we show that anti-PDGF drugs significantly inhibit tumour growth and metastasis in high PDGF-BB-producing tumours by preventing pericyte loss and vascular permeability, whereas they promote tumour cell dissemination and metastasis in PDGF-BB-low-producing or PDGF-BB-negative tumours by ablating pericytes from tumour vessels. We show that this opposing effect is due to PDGF-beta signalling in pericytes. Persistent exposure of pericytes to PDGF-BB markedly downregulates PDGF-beta and inactivation of the PDGF-beta signalling decreases integrin alpha 1 beta 1 levels, which impairs pericyte adhesion to extracellular matrix components in blood vessels. Our data suggest that tumour PDGF-BB levels may serve as a biomarker for selection of tumour-bearing hosts for anti-PDGF therapy and unsupervised use of anti-PDGF drugs could potentially promote tumour invasion and metastasis.