General information
Hypoxia, or a lack of oxygen in the tissues, can lead to harmful effects, exacerbate tissue breakdown, and contribute to the development of certain diseases. However, although chronic or severe hypoxia can lead to devastating consequences in the cell, adaptive mechanisms to hypoxia can be protective in various diseases. Cancer is the cause of death of millions of people worldwide.
Despite the diversity and improvement of treatments, a major problem is still the development of drug resistance during cancer treatment. The main cause of the latter is several metabolic dysfunctions caused by hypoxia in the tumor microenvironment. However, some studies show that during mild hypoxia, healthy angiogenesis occurs. We hypothesize that mild hypoxiastimulated healthy angiogenesis may provide drug access to deep tumor layers and circumvent drug resistance. This project will elucidate the mechanisms of mild hypoxia-induced reduction of resistance to various chemotherapeutic compounds in an experimental model of breast cancer by looking at the hypoxia-inducible factor-1 cell pathway.
