antiangiogenic
Meaning of antiangiogenic: A word for the brake on blood vessel growth, one the body applies by default and drugs press harder in eye disease and cancer.
Definition of antiangiogenic
Antiangiogenic describes a substance or an effect that suppresses angiogenesis, the sprouting of new blood vessels from existing ones. The body makes its own antiangiogenic molecules, and they normally keep vessel growth switched off except during wound healing and the menstrual cycle. Applied to a drug, the word means the medicine interrupts the signals that drive vessel growth, most often the signal known as VEGF.
How antiangiogenic is built
- anti- Prefix · Greek against, opposing
- angi/o Combining form · Greek vessel
- -genic Suffix · Greek producing, causing, originating in
A medical term is read from its ending backwards: the suffix first, then the prefix, then the root. See all 223 word parts.
What keeps vessel growth switched off?
A standoff between two sets of signals. Cells that are short of oxygen release messengers, chief among them vascular endothelial growth factor, that tell the cells lining nearby vessels to divide, dissolve their surroundings and creep toward the shortage. Other molecules push the opposite way and are made continuously, so in healthy adult tissue the brakes normally win. Vessel growth switches on only where the balance tips, which in ordinary life means a healing wound, the lining of the uterus each month, and the placenta. Tumors tip it deliberately, which is where the term is most often met.
Where does the effect get used?
| Setting | What suppression achieves |
|---|---|
| Wet macular degeneration | Halts leaking vessels growing under the retina |
| Diabetic eye disease | Reduces fragile new vessels and retinal swelling |
| Several solid cancers | Limits the vessel supply a tumor recruits |
| Retinopathy of prematurity | Controls disordered vessel growth in the infant eye |
By number of people treated, the eye leads by a wide margin. A tiny dose injected into the eye reaches the retina directly and leaves little to spread through the rest of the body, which is why the approach is far better tolerated there than the doses used against cancer through a vein.
What goes wrong when vessel growth is suppressed?
The same machinery serves purposes the body still needs. Vessels that would normally widen and repair themselves stay narrow and fragile, so blood pressure climbs, and high blood pressure is the commonest effect of systemic treatment. Protein leaks into the urine as the filtering vessels of the kidney lose their maintenance signal. Wounds heal slowly and surgical incisions come apart more readily, and bleeding and clotting both become more likely. Because every blood vessel in the body is built from the same lining cells, none of these are side effects in the sense of being unrelated; each follows directly from what the drug is doing.
Also known as
Used in a sentence
An antiangiogenic agent was added to the chemotherapy regimen.
Good to know
Suppressing new vessel growth also interferes with processes that depend on it, so raised blood pressure, protein in the urine, delayed wound healing and bleeding follow from the drug's own mechanism rather than being unrelated events.
Word origin
Where “antiangiogenic” comes from
Anti- is Greek for against, angeion is Greek for vessel, and genesis means coming into being, so the word describes acting against the making of vessels.