Elevated serum levels of vascular endothelial growth factor predict a poor prognosis of platinum-based chemotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer.
OBJECTIVE
This study was designed to investigate the predictive and prognostic values of serum vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) level in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients treated with platinum-based chemotherapy.


METHODS
Patients' peripheral blood samples were collected prior to chemotherapy and after 1 week of the third cycle of combination chemotherapy. Serum VEGF levels were evaluated through Luminex multiplex technique. Between September 2011 and August 2015, a total of 135 consecutive advanced or recurrent histologically verified NSCLC patients were enrolled in the study. Moreover, all the patients received platinum-based combination chemotherapy as a first-line treatment.


RESULTS
No significant associations were found between pretreatment serum VEGF levels and clinical characteristics, such as sex (P=0.0975), age (P=0.2522), stage (P=0.1407), lymph node metastasis (P=0.6409), tumor location (P=0.3520), differentiated degree (P=0.5608), pathological (histological) type (P=0.4885), and response to treatment (P=0.9859). The VEGF load per platelet (VEGFPLT) levels were not correlated with sex, age, primary tumor site, and pathological type in NSCLC patients (allP>0.05). The median survival time of progression-free survival (PFS) was 6.407 and 5.29 months in the low and high groups, respectively, when using 280 pg/mL VEGF level as the cutoff point (P=0.024).


CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, the serum VEGF levels were found to be a poor prognostic biomarker for the efficacy of platinum-based chemotherapy in terms of PFS, but it was not shown to be a suitable predictive marker for clinical response to platinum-based chemotherapy.
The Fourth Clinical School of Nanjing Medical University; Department of Chemotherapy, Nanjing Medical University Affiliated Cancer Hospital, Nanjing; Department of Oncology, The First Hospital of Harbin City, Harbin.
Jialan
J
Zang
The Fourth Clinical School of Nanjing Medical University; Department of Chemotherapy, Nanjing Medical University Affiliated Cancer Hospital, Nanjing.
Yong
Y
Hu
The Fourth Clinical School of Nanjing Medical University; Department of Chemotherapy, Nanjing Medical University Affiliated Cancer Hospital, Nanjing.
Xiaoyue
X
Xu
The Fourth Clinical School of Nanjing Medical University; Department of Chemotherapy, Nanjing Medical University Affiliated Cancer Hospital, Nanjing.
Jie
J
Ni
The Fourth Clinical School of Nanjing Medical University; Department of Chemotherapy, Nanjing Medical University Affiliated Cancer Hospital, Nanjing.
Dali
D
Yan
Center of Clinical Laboratory, Nanjing Medical University Affiliated Cancer Hospital.
Siwen
S
Liu
Department of Public Health, Southeast University, Nanjing, People's Republic of China.
Jieyu
J
He
Center of Clinical Laboratory, Nanjing Medical University Affiliated Cancer Hospital.
Jing
J
Xue
Center of Clinical Laboratory, Nanjing Medical University Affiliated Cancer Hospital.
Jianzhong
J
Wu
Department of Chemotherapy, Nanjing Medical University Affiliated Cancer Hospital, Nanjing.
Jifeng
J
Feng
Luminex multiplex; VEGF; chemotherapy; non-small cell lung cancer; platinum; prognosis; progression-free survival