VASCULAR ENDOTHELIAL GROWTH-FACTOR IS ASSOCIATED WITH NEOVASCULARIZATION AND INFLUENCES PROGRESSION OF NONSMALL CELL LUNG-CARCINOMA

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plays a pivotal role in the development of neovascularization in both physiological and pathologic al processes, e,g., developmental and reproductive angiogenesis, proli ferative retinopathies, and cancers, Several solid tumors produce ampl e amounts of VEGF, which stimulates proliferation and migration of end othelial cells, thereby inducing neovascularization by a paracrine mec hanism, Recently, VEGF expression has been shown to significantly affe ct the prognosis of different kinds of human cancer. Because neoangiog enesis represents an important prognostic indicator of poor prognosis in nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC), we investigated the influence of VEGF during progression of this type of cancer and its relationship t o tumoral neovascularization, VEGF expression was significantly associ ated with new vessel formation (r = 0.44; P < 0.0001), Moreover, in un ivariate analysis, VEGF expression significantly affected overall and disease-free survival (P = 0.00003 and P = 0.0004, respectively), Back ward stepwise regression analysis indicated that VEGF expression was a n 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.