Objectives. Vascular endothelial growth factors A and B (VEGF-A and
VEGF-B) play a major role in angiogenesis and activate VEGF receptor I
(VEGFR-1). However, the clinicopathologic and clinical value of VEGF-B
and VEGFR-I in invasive breast carcinoma remains unclear.
Methods. We immunohistochemically examined the expression pattern of
VEGF-A, VEGF-B and VEGFR-1 in 177 invasive breast carcinomas in relation
to clinicopathological parameters, p53, c-erbB2 proteins expression and
patients’ survival.
Results. VEGF-A, VEGF-B and VEGFR-1 were immunodetected predominantly in
the cytoplasm of the malignant cells. None of the studied markers
correlated with any of the clinicopathological parameters, other than
stromal VEGFR-1 which inversely correlated with PR (p=0.021). Cancerous
VEGF-A and stromal VEGFR-1 were positively related to p53 (p=0.016 and
p=0.033, respectively). Cancerous VEGF-B was positively associated with
c-erbB-2 (p=0.045) and was found to exert an unfavorable impact on both
disease-free and the overall survival of the node-positive patients
(p=0.05 and p=0.029, respectively). Cancerous VEGFR-1 was recognized as
being an independent poor prognostic indicator (p=0.037).
Conclusion. These findings suggest that, while VEGF-B seems to be useful
as a prognostic indicator only in node-positive patients, VEGFR-1 may be
an independent poor prognosticator in patients with invasive breast
carcinoma. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
