摘要Background Great efforts have been made to search for the angiogenic inhibitors in avascular tissues. Several proteins isolated from cartilage have been proved to have anti-angiogenic or anti-tumour effects. Because cartilage contains a great amount of hyaluronic acid (HA) oligosaccharides and abundant HA binding proteins (HABP), therefore, we speculated that HABP might be one of the factors regulating vascularization in cartilage or anti-angiogenesis in tumours. The purpose of this research was to evaluale the effects of hyaluronan binding protein on inhibiting tumour growth both in vivo and vitro. Methods A unique protein termed human brain hyaluronan (HA) binding protein (b-HABP) was cloned from human brain cDNA library. MDA-435 human breast cancer cell line was chosen as a transfectant. The in vitro underlying mechanisms were investigated by determining the possibilities of MDA-435/b-HABP colony formation on soft agar, the effects of the transfectant on the proliferation of endothelial cells and the expression levels of caspase 3 and FasL from MDA-435/b-HABP. The in vivo study included tumour growth on the chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) of chicken embryos and nude mice. Results Colony formation assay revealed that the colonies formed by MDA-435/b-HABP were greatly reduced compared to mock transfectants. The conditioned media from MDA-435/b-HABP inhibited the growth of endothelial cells in culture. Caspase 3 and FasL expressions were induced by MDA-435/b-HABP. The size of tumours of MDA-435/b-HABP in both CAM and nude mice was much smaller than that of MDA-435 alone. Conclusions Human brain hyaluronan binding protein (b-HABP) may represent a new kind of naturally existing anti-tumour substance. This brain-derived glycoprotein may block tumour growth by inducing apoptosis of cancer cells or by decreasing angiogenesis in tumour tissue via inhibiting proliferation of endothelial cells.