Figure 1.

Strategies to enhance blood vessel perfusion and drug penetration.

Notes: Anticoagulant treatment depletes the deposition of fibrin or other plasma proteins on the blood vessel wall and the extravascular thrombosis, which increases the effective cross-sectional area of tumor blood vessels and improves perfusion. Vascular normalization remodels tumor vessels, which decreases vessel permeability and improves perfusion. Both strategies can be applied either alone or in combination based on whether tumor blood is hypercoagulable, vessels are aberrant, both of these, or neither.

Abbreviations: EC, endothelial cell; BM, basement membrane; PC, pericyte.