XWH - 04 - 1 - 0316 TITLE : Prevention of the Angiogenic Switch in Human Breast Cancer

| Angiogenesis — the process of new blood-vessel growth — has an essential role in development, reproduction and repair. However, pathological angiogenesis occurs not only in tumour formation, but also in a range of nonneoplastic diseases that could be classed together as ‘angiogenesis-dependent diseases’. By viewing the process of angiogenesis as an ‘organizing principle’ in biology, intriguing insights into the molecular mechanisms of seemingly unrelated phenomena might be gained. This has important consequences for the clinical use of angiogenesis inhibitors and for drug discovery, not only for optimizing the treatment of cancer, but possibly also for developing therapeutic approaches for various diseases that are otherwise unrelated to each other. NATURE REVIEWS | DRUG DISCOVERY VOLUME 6 | APRIL 2007 | 273 PERSPECTIVES © 2007 Nature Publishing Group 11 Circulating precursor endothelial cells