Abstract
Cancer is a major disease burden worldwide. In recent years, in addition to surgical resection, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are recognized as the most effective methods for treating solid tumors. These methods have been introduced to treat tumors of different origins and stages clinically. However, due to insufficient blood flow and oxygen (O2) supply in solid tumors, hypoxia is caused, leading to decreased sensitivity of tumor cells and poor therapeutic effects. In addition, hypoxia will also lead to resistance to most anticancer drugs, accelerate malignant progress, and increase metastasis. In solid tumors, adequate O2 supply and adequate delivery of anticancer drugs are essential to improve radiotherapy and chemotherapy sensitivity. In recent decades, the researches on relieving tumor hypoxia have attracted researchers' extensive attention and achieved good results. However, as far as we know, there is no detailed review of the researches on alleviating tumor hypoxia. Therefore, in this contribution, we hope to give an overview of the researches on methods to improve tumor hypoxia environment and summarize their effect and application in tumor therapy, to provide a methodological reference for the research and development of new antitumor agents.
Highlights
As a major public health problem worldwide, cancer can threaten human health seriously
Hypoxia has always been a critical factor influencing the development of drug resistance in cancer treatment and chemotherapy, which leads to the vital role of tumor hypoxia in oncology attracting more and more attention
We reviewed various approaches to reduce tumor hypoxia, which could be summarized as therapies that delivered O2 to tumor tissues, promoted tumor blood flow, produced O2 in situ, and reduced the O2 consumption of cancer cells
Summary
As a major public health problem worldwide, cancer can threaten human health seriously. The incidence and mortality of cancer have been alleviated, cancer itself has been a research hotspot in the field of biomedicine due to its complicated pathogenesis, poor treatment effect, and high risk of recurrence [1,2,3]. The origins of hypoxia can be traced in large measure to the abnormal neovascularization, poor blood flow, and increased proliferation activity of tumor cells, which results in an imbalance between O2 supply and O2 consumption in tumor cells. Tumor hypoxia is one of the dominant causes of tumor resistance to different cancer treatment [12,13,14]. The challenges and prospects of reducing tumor hypoxia for the clinical transformation of cancer treatment will be discussed for providing methodological references
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