Keith Robison at Omics! Omics! points out a paper in PNAS in which Regeneron shows that a compound it developed called VEGF-Trap can be used to measure the amount of circulating VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) in blood. VEGF is a signaling molecule that stimulates angiogenesis, and is therefore used to determine dosage for drugs used to treat cancer. By measuring the amount of free and VEGF-complexed VEGF-Trap, they found that they can measure levels of VEGF and identify a dose which ensures that the most trapping occurs.
Better Ways to Get the Right Dose
Nov 20, 2007