Blood vessels bring oxygen and nutrients to every cell in the body while removing waste and allowing immune cells to survey. They do the same in cancer and other diseases. In most types of tumors, new vessels produced through angiogenesis have abnormal structure and function, leading to impaired perfusion that paradoxically supports malignancy. For this reason, the study of the micro-anatomy, morphology and function of blood vessels in tumors is essential to find new vulnerabilities to be targeted in our fight to tumors.

Dr Seano will present an overview of his works on blood vessel histological investigation. The study of the abnormalities of tumor blood vessels elucidated tumor features and is still shedding light on its pathology. Tumor vessels may be characterized by abnormal morphology, disrupted vascular basement membrane and reduced pericyte coverage. This causes dysfunction in perfusion and consequently leads to an hypoxic and immunosuppressive environment, typical of tumors. Breast cancer and glioblastoma are two of the most important tumors in the field of vascular microenvironment since we learnt that we can therapeutically modulate and temporally normalize vascular function. Dr Seano will show digital pathology results published during his period at Harvard Medical School and unpublished data from his own new lab.

Presented at the virtual Pathology Visions 2020 meeting during Visiopharm’s Industry Workshop on Monday, October 26, 2020.

Dr Giorgio Seano, Head of the Tumor Microenvironment LabInstitut Curie, Orsay-Paris (France)

Dr Seano is the Head of the Tumor Microenvironment Lab at Institut Curie, Orsay-Paris (France). His scientific interests are tumor vasculature, vessel co-option, cell migration and radioresistance. Among others, he published on Science, Cancer Cell, PNAS, Nat Cell Biol, Nat Biom Eng, JNCI, Blood and Cancer Res.