Expression of VEGF in serum and lesion tissue of patients with lung can-cer and its relationship with prognosis

AIM: To study the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in serum and lesion tissue of lung cancer patients and to explore its correlation with biological characters of the disease. METHODS: Expression of VEGF in sera of patients with lung cancer and patients with pneumonic tumor-like lesions was detected by ELISA. Immunohistochemistry methods (SP) were used to examine VEGF expression in tumor tissues and adjacent non-tumor tissues of lung cancer patients and in pathological tissues of pneumonic lesions. RESULTS: Serum VEGF level [(330±65) ng/L] in lung cancer patients was significantly higher than that in patients with pneumonic tumor-like lesions [(143±35) ng/L, P0.05)]. The expression rate of VEGF in tumor tissues, tumor-adjacent normal tissue and benign lesion tissues were 74.8%, 46.3% and 18.1%, respectively, and it was significanthy higher in the tumor tissues than in the other two (P0.05). VEGF in sera and tissues of lung cancer patients was both not related to age, sex, cigarette smoking and TNM stages (P0.05), but to histologic subtype, differentiation and lymph node metastases (P0.05). CONCLUSION: VEGF is overexpressed in pathological tissues and sera of patients with lung cancer. There are remarkable relationships between the expression of VEGF and histologic subtype, differentiation, lymph node metastases, so it could be linked to prognosis of lung can-cer. VEGF may be identified as a brand-new diagnostic marker and a potential gene therapeutic target for some types of lung cancer.