[Angiogenin and its role in angiogenesis]

The review is devoted to angiogenin, one of the factors that induce formation of blood vessels, which is unique among them in that it is a ribonuclease. Consideration is given to the tertiary structure of human angiogenin; the catalytic and cell-receptor binding sites, their significance for angiogenic activity; the human angiogenin gene structure, chromosomal localization, and expression; the specificity of angiogenin as a ribonuclease and abolishment of protein synthesis; the nuclear localization of angiogenin in proliferating endothelial cells and its significance for angiogenic activity; angiogenin binding to a cell-surface actin as a plausible mechanism of inducing neovascularization (enhancement of plasminogen activation by actin with angiogenin, stimulation of the cell-associated proteolytic activity by angiogenin; promotion of the cultured cells invasiveness); modulation of mitogenic stimuli in endothelial, smooth muscle, and fibroblast cells by angiogenin. The importance of angiogenin as an adhesive molecule for endothelial and tumor cells is discussed too, as well as the modulation of tubular morphogenesis by bovine angiogenin, prevention of tumor growth in vivo by angiogenin antagonists, prospects of the use of angiogenin and angiogenin-encoding recombinant plasmids and vaccinia virus in therapeutic practice.