Intratumor Angiogenesis and Expression of Angiogenic Factors in Human Pancreatic Cancer

Objective： This study was designed to investigate microvessel density (MVD) and expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)， basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) in pancreatic cancer, and the relevance of these three indexes to the biological behavior of the cancer． Methods： Intratumor MVD and the expression of VEGF and bFGF were examined by immunohistochemical staining in 47 pancreatic cancer tissues (polyclonal antibody for FⅧ and VEGF, monoclonal antibody for bFGF), and the relationship between either MVD or the expression of these two angiogenic factors and the clinicopathological features, including survival were analyzed． Results： MVD in cancer tissues was higher (10.32± 3.32) than that in normal tissues (6.72± 1.73) (P 0.01). In 47 cases, the positive rate of expression of VEGF, bFGF protein in pancreatic cancer was significantly higher than that in normal tissues(P 0.05), 57.44％ of 47 pancreatic cancer were positive for VEGF protein in cancer cells,and 63.82％ showed strong bFGF staining in cancer and infilbrating cells． The overexpression of VEGF and bFGF protein correlated significantly with high MVD (P 0.05). Advanced pathological grade of the disease was significantly more frequent in the patients with high MVD, positive staining of VEGF and bFGF, (P 0.01)． The higher MVD and the overexpression of bFGF correlated with poor survival (P 0.05)． Conclusions： Intratumor MVD is strongly related to the progress, invasiveness and metastasis of pancreatic cancer, and may serve as a meaningful prognostic factor． The overexpression of VEGF and bFGF may play an important role in the process of tumor-associated neovascularization and suggest that VEGF or bFGF system may be promising target for antiangiongenic strategy of pancreatic cancer．