ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Experimental Pharmacology and Drug Discovery
Systemic Angiogenic Protein Changes Following Propranolol Therapy in Infantile Hemangioma: A Multi-Target Perspective
Provisionally accepted
- 1General Hospital of Ningxia Medical University, Yinchuan, China
- 2Ningxia Vocational Technical College of Industry and Commerce, Yinchuan, China
- 3Dalian Medical University Graduate School, Dalian, China
- 4Ningxia Medical University, Yinchuan, China
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Infantile hemangioma (IH) is a common benign vascular tumor in infants, often requiring intervention due to potential functional impairment and cosmetic concerns. Propranolol, a nonselective β-adrenergic receptor blocker, is the first-line therapy for IH, yet its mechanisms remain incompletely elucidated. This prospective study investigated the systemic angiogenic protein profile changes in response to propranolol in 14 treatment-naïve IH infants compared to 14 healthy controls. Using antibody array analysis, we identified twenty-six angiogenic proteins significantly downregulated in pretreatment IH patients compared to healthy controls. After 3 months of propranolol treatment, six proteins including HB-EGF, TGFα, ANGPTL4, Follistatin, Tie-1 and PLGF were significantly upregulated. Bioinformatic enrichment analysis revealed that these proteins are involved in key biological processes and signaling pathways, including epithelial cell proliferation, angiogenesis regulation, VEGF signaling, ERBB-EGFR axis, Ras-MAPK, and PI3K-Akt pathways. These results suggest that propranolol treatment is associated with a rebalancing of dysregulated angiogenic proteins in IH, through modulating both pro-and anti-angiogenic factors to rebalance vascular homeostasis. Our study provides novel insights into the systems-level pharmacological actions of propranolol and proposes potential biomarkers for treatment response evaluation.
Keywords: Angiogenesis, biomarkers, infantile hemangioma, Propranolol, Signaling Pathways
Received: 15 Sep 2025; Accepted: 08 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lijun, Zhang, Ma, Liu, Du and Ma. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Liang Lijun
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