Grant: Operating Grant

Anti-angiogenic therapy involves treatments with drugs that inhibit the growth of blood vessels. In adults angiogenesis only occurs during wound healing, inflammation and a few other instances. Tumour growth necessitates new blood vessel development to feed the enlarging tumour. New generations of anti-angiogenic agents should be much more potent than those used currently. Combination of anti-angiogenic agents with radiation therapy is a tantalizing concept but scheduling needs to be rationally designed to be optimally effective. Using novel microscopy techniques we propose to characterize the way anti-angiogenic agents affect tumours so that radiation therapy can be incorporated into treatment in the most advantageous manner. MRI methods will be developed to allow the activity of anti-angiogenic agents to be followed and to define the optimal manner to incorporate radiation therapy.