BACKGROUND: Angiogenesis plays a key role in the growth and metastasis of solid tumor. But it is not known whether the hematopoietic tumor depends on angiogenesis. To evaluate the prognostic roles of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression and angiogenesis in patients with acute myelogenous leukemia, we analyzed the relationships between the level of VEGF expression, microvessel counts (MVC) in the bone marrow specimen of acute myelogenous leukemia patient and remission, relapse, and overall survival. METHODS: We evaluated bone marrow biopsy from 32 adult patients with newly diagnosed acute myelogenous leukemia and 16 controls with normal bone marrow. VEGF expression and MVC were assessed by immunohistochemical stain with monoclonal antibody to VEGF and polyclonal antibody to factor VIIIRAg, respectively. RESULTS: VEGF expression was higher in acute myelogenous leukemia than that of control (56.4+/-32.8% vs 19.0+/-25.9%, P=0.004). MVC was also higher in acute myelogenousleukemia than that of control (14.7+/-10.3 vs 6.2+/-3.8, P<0.001). Between high VEGF expression group and low VEGF expression group, there were no significant differences in the complete remission (CR), relapse and overall survival. There was no significant difference of MVC between CR group and non- CR group. Relapse group tends to have higher MVC than non-relapse group without statistical significance (P=0.06). There were no significant differences of MVC between hypervascular group and hypovascular group in remission, relapse and overall survival. CONCLUSION: In patients with acute myelogenous leukemia, VEGF expression and MVC were significantly higher than those of control. These findings suggest angiogenesis may play an important role in the pathogenesis of acute myelogenous leukemia. But there was no clinical correlation between the level of VEGF expression, MVC and remission, relapse and overall survival in this study. Further study willbe necessary for the establishment of prognostic role of VEGF expression and angioge-nesis and clinical efficacy of angiogenic inhibitors in acute myelogenous leukemia.
Adult ; Angiogenesis Inhibitors ; Biopsy ; Bone Marrow ; Humans ; Leukemia, Myeloid, Acute* ; Microvessels ; Neoplasm Metastasis ; Recurrence ; Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A*