Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor: Background and History

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) was officially discovered in 1983 as vascular permeability factor (VPF) by Senger and colleagues at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. 1 However, the notion of such a biologic mediator and the significance of angiogenesis existed long before its physical isolation. As far back as the late 1800s, several German pathologists, including the renowned Rudolph Virchow, observed increased vascularity in some human tumors, suggesting that new vessels played a role in these cancers. 2 Over the ensuing decades, scientists continued to describe the varying vascular patterns of different tumors 3 until 1939, when Gordon Ide and colleagues noted the correlation between tumor growth and blood vessel formation using a rabbit model and transplanted carcinoma. 4 Their observation of a marked angiogenic response associated with tumor transplantation led them to hypothesize the existence of a vascular growth factor produced by tumor cells. Algire and a group at the National Cancer Institute built on this work in 1945, demonstrating that transplanted tumor tissue in rats led to increased vessel formation while transplanted normal tissue did not. This finding again suggested the presence of a vascular growth factor associated with tumor tissue.