Abstract

IntroductionFinding new markers to assess prognosis of melanoma without the necessity to perform a surgical interventions is an important goal in melanoma research. The current study aimed to assess the correlation of clinical course and prognosis of primary and metastatic melanoma with expression of VEGF family and their receptors.MethodsA ngTMA block was made from the randomly selected paraffin tissue blocks of the patients with melanocytic nevi, primary and metastatic melanoma. Then sections cut from ngTMA-block were immunohistochemically stained with proper antibodies. Expression of these proteins was investigated using automated image analysis and compared among the study groups.ResultsWe analyzed the tissue of 238 patients with following diagnoses: 101 (42.4%) with a diagnosis of nevus, 86 (36.1%) Malignant melanoma and 51 (21.4%) metastasis. Median follow-up time for the malignant lesions was 5.71 years. Among the tested antigen, VEGF-C (p = 0.016), VEGF-R2 (p<0.001) and VEGF-R3 (p = 0.002) were significantly higher expressed in the metastatic tissues. When these scores were assessed in multiple regression models, the only independent factor linked to patient’s diagnosis was VEGF-R2 (p<0.001). In addition, groups of highly correlated variables (VEGF-C and VEGF-R3, VEGF-A and VEGF-R1) were found to form separate sub-clusters. On the other side, high values of VEGF-C were associated with both overall and disease-free survival with a statically significant HR of 2.76 (95% CI: 1.27, 5.98; p = 0.01) and 2.82 (95%CI: 1.62, 4.91; p<0.001), respectively.ConclusionsThis study shows that VEGF-C and VEGF-R2 might represent new prognostic marker in MM. However, further prospective studies are warranted to test their real efficacy as a prognostic marker.

Highlights

  • Finding new markers to assess prognosis of melanoma without the necessity to perform a surgical interventions is an important goal in melanoma research

  • This study shows that Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF)-C and VEGF-R2 might represent new prognostic marker in MM

  • Malignant melanoma (MM) is a malignant tumor arising from an uncontrolled growth of melanocytes, [1, 2] responsible for 90% of the deaths associated with cutaneous tumors. [1, 3, 4] The prognosis of patients with melanoma is tumor-stage dependent

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Summary

Objectives

The role of such angiogenic factors on the clinical follow up and disease-prognosis, inclusive patient-survival in MM remains unclear. [13] With this study for the first time, we aimed to assess the correlation between the expression of various VEGF/receptors, and the clinical course and prognosis of patients with primary and metastatic melanoma

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