Vascular endothelial growth factor is associated with neovascularization and influences progression of non-small cell lung carcinoma

Abstract

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plays a pivotal role in the development of neovascularization in both physiological and pathological processes, e.g., developmental and reproductive angiogenesis, proliferative retinopathies, and cancers. Several solid tumors produce ample amounts of VEGF, which stimulates proliferation and migration of endothelial cells, thereby inducing neovascularization by a paracrine mechanism. Recently, VEGF expression has been shown to significantly affect the prognosis of different kinds of human cancer. Because neoangiogenesis represents an important prognostic indicator of poor prognosis in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), we investigated the influence of VEGF during progression of this type of cancer and its relationship to tumoral neovascularization. VEGF expression was significantly associated with new vessel formation (r = 0.44; P < 0.0001). Moreover, in univariate analysis, VEGF expression significantly affected overall and disease-free survival (P = 0.00003 and P = 0. 0004, respectively). Backward stepwise regression analysis indicated that VEGF expression was an independent prognostic factor in patients with NSCLC. These findings support the hypothesis that VEGF is an important angiogenic factor in primary NSCLC and may help in predicting the outcome of this group of cancers.