December 2010
Volume 51, Issue 12
Free
Letters to the Editor  |   December 2010
Bevacizumab Suppression of Establishment of Micrometastases in Experimental Ocular Melanoma
Author Affiliations & Notes
  • Rajesh K. Sharma
    Department of Ophthalmology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Jacksonville, Florida.
  • Sankarathi Balaiya
    Department of Ophthalmology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Jacksonville, Florida.
  • Kakarla V. Chalam
    Department of Ophthalmology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Jacksonville, Florida.
Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science December 2010, Vol.51, 6906. doi:https://doi.org/10.1167/iovs.10-6275
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    • Get Citation

      Rajesh K. Sharma, Sankarathi Balaiya, Kakarla V. Chalam; Bevacizumab Suppression of Establishment of Micrometastases in Experimental Ocular Melanoma. Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci. 2010;51(12):6906. https://doi.org/10.1167/iovs.10-6275.

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      © ARVO (1962-2015); The Authors (2016-present)

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  • Supplements
We read with great interest the article entitled, “Bevacizumab Suppression of Establishment of Micrometastases in Experimental Ocular Melanoma” by Yang et al., 1 published in the June issue. We congratulate the authors for this informative study. However, we have a few concerns about the study. 
  1.  
    In Figure 1, the authors demonstrate that bevacizumab reduced VEGF secretion. However, it is more likely that bevacizumab neutralized the secreted VEGF, rather than suppressed it.
  2.  
    It is not clear why, even though bevacizumab may have neutralized the secreted VEGF, the neutralized VEGF could not be measured by ELISA. The epitopes for antibodies used in ELISAs (27-191 amino acids) are likely to be against a different region of VEGF than are the functional epitopes bound by bevacizumab.
  3.  
    The authors state that VEGF secretion was slightly suppressed with 10 μg/mL bevacizumab (P = 0.0046) and greatly reduced with 100 μg/mL (P = 0.0091) in B16LS9 cells, compared with the effect of the IgG1 control treatment. However, they also state that the levels of VEGF after 10 and 100 μg/mL bevacizumab were 8.51 and 15.99 pg/mL, respectively. Thus, the levels were higher in cultures treated with a higher dose of bevacizumab (100 μg/mL). Also, in Figure 1C, it does not appear that the VEGF levels were decreased significantly by bevacizumab.
  4.  
    Several earlier studies (e.g., Ferrara et al. 2 ) reported that bevacizumab does not neutralize mouse VEGF, raising the question of how bevacizumab may have reduced the VEGF levels.
References
Yang H Jager MJ Grossniklaus HE . Bevacizumab suppression of establishment of micrometastases in experimental ocular melanoma. Invest Ophthalmol Vis. Sci. 2010;51(6):2835–2842. [CrossRef] [PubMed]
Ferrara N Hillan KJ Novotny W . Bevacizumab (Avastin), a humanized anti-VEGF monoclonal antibody for cancer therapy. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2005;333:328–335. [CrossRef] [PubMed]
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