Improving the condition of tumour blood vessels may reduce the likelihood that the cancer will spread. Abnormal blood vessels inside tumours impede the delivery of oxygen to cancerous cells as well as affecting the cells' sensitivity to chemotherapy. Meanwhile, oxygen-starved tumour cells are more likely to metastasize. To study this process, Peter Carmeliet of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and his colleagues created mice that had only one functional copy of the PHD2 gene, which encodes an oxygen-sensing protein called PHD2. Tumour blood vessels in these mutant mice were not leaky like those in normal mice. And although tumours in the mutants grew normally, they received more oxygen and did not metastasize as often as tumours in normal mice.
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