While previous work had suggested that endothelial precursor cells from the bone marrow might be used for tumor angiogenesis, our work showed conclusively that those precursors were of functional significance. Rescuing tumor angiogenesis of Id knockout mice (which fail to form functional tumor vessels) with bone marrow from a wild type donor was the key experiment in the analysis.

I think people are now examining the role of bone marrow-derived endothelial cell precursors in a number of different postnatal angiogenesis models in the mouse as well as in clinical settings.

  How did you become involved in this research?

Dr. David Lyden and I had been analyzing the role of Id proteins in tumor angiogenesis and we were fortunate to team up with Shahin Rafii's group which was leading the way in the involvement of bone marrow in angiogenesis. Our model and Shahin's expertise were a perfect combination!

Our work suggests that the source of blood vessel-forming cells required to make blood vessels that feed many cancers are derived from the bone marrow. Inhibiting the mobilization of these cells from the bone marrow to the tumor might be an important indicator of the efficacy of drugs that are designed to treat cancers by inhibiting tumor angiogenesis. These cells may also be direct targets for anti-angiogenesis drug design.