Objective To investigate the clinical significance and difference in the expression of endostatin and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with different response to recombinant human endostatin (rh-endostatin) combined with chemotherapy.Methods Serum levels of endostatin and VEGF in peripheral blood of 30 patients with stage Ⅳ NSCLC (NSCLC group) and 30 healthy controls (control group) were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.Two cycles of chemotherapy combined with rh-endostatin were provided to NSCLC patients to evaluate the efficacy of the regimen.Simultaneously,serum levels of endostatin and VEGF were measured before and after treatment.Results The level of serum endostatin was (37.96 ± 9.01) ng/ml and (40.12 ± 12.11)ng/ml in NSCLC patients and healthy controls,respectively,which was lower in the former than that of the latter,without statistical difference (P ＞ 0.05).Furthermore,the level of serum VEGF was (127.98 ± 33.88) pg/ml and (36.33 ± 15.43) pg/ml in NSCLC patients and healthy controls,respectively,which was higher in the former than that of the latter,with statistical difference (t =13.48,P ＜ 0.05).Besides,levels of endostatin and VEGF in serum were not correlated with the sex,age,tumor pathological type and differentiation of NSCLC patients (P ＞ 0.05).After two cycles of chemotherapy combined with rh-endostatin treatment,the level of serum endostatin in partial response (PR) or stable disease (SD) patients was (76.22 ± 20.41) ng/ml,higher than that of progressive disease (PD) patients,which was (31.24 ± 13.09) ng/ml (t =7.143,P ＜ 0.05).In addition,the level of serum VEGF in PR or SD patients was (93.28 ± 21.33) pg/ml,which was lower than (155.81 ± 48.38) pg/ml of the PD patients (t =3.503,P ＜ 0.05).Conclusions The levels of endostatin and VEGF are associated with the efficacy of anti-angiogenesis combined with chemotherapy in NSCLC patients.