All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background Epithelial ovarian learn more cancer (EOC) has the ~50% mortality rate, making it the leading cause of death from gynecological cancers [1, 2]. In most patients, metastasis occurs within the peritoneum by the time of diagnosis. Although the cellular and molecular mechanisms of tumor growth and metastasis are not completely understood, it is established that formation and growth of new blood vessels is critical for tumor survival, growth, and expansion [3]. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the more vasculogenesis,

the more malignant of the tumors. Thus, efforts to reduce the growth and spread of ovarian cancer have recently focused on angiogenesis because they are dependent in part on the formation of adequate vascular support [4], which means forming or sprouting of new endothelium-lined vessels from preexisting vessels [5]. The traditionally recognized mechanism for tumor CB-839 order vasculature and perfusion has been thought to be endothelial cells-lined vascular networks [6]. However, recent study has found that some aggressive tumor

cells generate vasculogenic-like channels in the absence of endothelial cells or fibroblasts [7]. The formation of the patterned microcirculation is termed vasculogenic mimicry (VM), which indicates the process by which aggressive tumor cells are able to generate not-endothelial cell-lined channels delimited by extracellular matrix in vitro [7–9]. That’s the reason why it is difficult to control ovarian cancer with angiogenesis-targeted therapy strategies [9] which have no positive effect on such vasculogenesis. Hypoxia HSP90 is one of the major important factors in angiogenesis descried

by Folkman for it is associated with resistance to chemo- and radio-therapies. The development of tissue hypoxia is characteristically observed as malignant tumor rapidly increase in size. Such hypoxic conditions exert selective pressure on cancer cells, and the ability of tumor cells to selleck inhibitor survive in a hypoxic microenvironment has been associated with a poor prognosis and resistance to therapy [10]. One of the most critical and best characterized responses to hypoxia is the induction of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) is a well-established mediator in this process. Our previous studies have demonstrated that the ovarian cancer cells could be induced into endothelial-like cells which have the specific characteristics of endothelial cells at the condition of hypoxia in vivo and in vitro [11–13], in which HIF-1α played a vital role. As it is known that the endothelial-like cells (EL) origin from cancer cells are different from the endothelial cells. However, the detailed difference and the mechanisms are not well understood.