The prognostic value of vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGFs)-A and -B and their receptor, VEGFR-1, in invasive breast carcinoma

OBJECTIVES: Vascular endothelial growth factors A and B (VEGF-A and VEGF-B) play a major role in angiogenesis and activate VEGF receptor 1 (VEGFR-1). However, the clinicopathologic and clinical value of VEGF-B and VEGFR-1 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.