Hypoxia-Inducible Factors as an Alternative Source of Treatment Strategy for Cancer

Abstract

Hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) are transcription factors that activate the transcription of genes necessary to circumvent to hypoxic (low oxygen level) environments. In carcinogenesis, HIFs play a critical role. Indeed, HIF-1α has been validated as a promising target for novel cancer therapeutics, even as clinical investigations have linked increased levels of HIF-1α with aggressive cancer progression as well as poor patient prognosis. More so, inhibiting HIF-1 activity restricted cancer progression. Therefore, HIF-1 is a viable target for cancer therapy. This may be expected considering the fact that cancer cells are known to be hypoxic. In order to survive the hypoxic microenvironment, cancer cells activate several biochemical pathways via the HIF-1α. Additionally, cellular and molecular insights have proved prospects of the HIF-1α pathway for the development of novel anticancer treatment strategies. The biochemical importance of hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) cannot be overemphasized as carcinogenesis, cancer progression, and HIFs are intricately linked. Therefore, this review highlights the significance of these linkages and also the prospects of HIFs as an alternative source of cancer therapies.

Identification of Signatures of Prognosis Prediction for Melanoma Using a Hypoxia Score

“…Hypoxia, one of the hallmarks of TME, is a biological condition present in most tumors ( Jing et al, 2019 ). Tumor hypoxia exacerbates progression and metastasis through both physiological and genomic mechanisms ( Akanji et al, 2019 ). Investigating crucial features of tumor hypoxia environment may facilitate clinical decision-making.…”

Pathological Mechanistic Studies of Osimertinib Resistance in Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Cells Using an Integrative Metabolomics-Proteomics Analysis

“…Furthermore, the content of AMP was significantly decreased in OR cells, which might be partly due to participating in mTOR signaling pathway to promote proteins synthesis. Hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs), a kind of transcription factors activated under the hypoxic environment to maintain cell activity, exert an important effect on tumor's drug resistance [21]. HIF-1 can induce the expression of P-glycoprotein through binding to the HIF-1 binding site in MDR1 promoters, and P-glycoprotein is the multidrug -2 × 10 5 2 × 10 5 0 1 * t [1] 1.10929 * t0 [1] H1975 group OR group efflux transporter in cells [22,23].…”

Autonomous glucose metabolic reprogramming of tumour cells under hypoxia: opportunities for targeted therapy

“…Since HIF can regulate the energy metabolism of cancer cells through multiple channels under hypoxic conditions and promote the survival of cancer cells, inhibiting the cancer metabolism pathway mediated by HIF or HIF may become one of the potential treatment methods for cancer [105][106][107]. It has been discovered that many drugs, such as aspirin [108] and Tamoxifen [109], can block the growth of tumors by inhibiting the expression or activity of HIF-1α thereby providing new anti-cancer treatments.…”