HIF-1α pathway: role, regulation and intervention for cancer therapy

Hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) has been recognized as an important cancer drug target. Many recent studies have provided convincing evidences of strong correlation between elevated levels of HIF-1 and tumor metastasis, angiogenesis, poor patient prognosis as well as tumor resistance therapy. It was found that hypoxia (low (2 levels) is a common character in many types of solid tumors. As an adaptive response to hypoxic stress, hypoxic tumor cells activate several survival pathways to carry out their essential biological processes in different ways compared with normal cells. Recent advances in cancer biology at the cellular and molecular levels highlighted the HIF-1 alpha pathway as a crucial sun rival pathway for which novel strategies of cancer therapy could be developed. However, targeting the HIF-1 alpha pathway has been a challenging but promising progresses have been made in the past twenty years. This review suminarizcs the role and regulation of the HIF-1 alpha in cancer, and recent therapeutic approaches targeting this important pathway. (c) 2015 Chinese Pharmaceutical Association and Institute of Materia Medico, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.