Correlations between VEGF-A expression and prognosis in patients with gastric adenocarcinoma.

Angiogenesis induced by vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A) plays a critical role in tumor growth and metastasis. The study aimed to evaluate the expression of VEGF-A in gastric adenocarcinoma and investigate its correlations with tumor clinicopathological features and prognostic significance. VEGF-A expression was detected by immunohistochemistry on a tissue microarray containing 90 pairs of human gastric adenocarcinoma and paracancerous tissues. Levels of VEGF-A in gastric adenocarcinoma were significantly higher than those in paracancerous tissues (=0.018). Furthermore, the result was coincident with that of human gastric adenocarcinoma xenografts in nude-mice (<0.01). In addition, the VEGF-A expression was positive correlation with TNM stage (=0.047), tumor size (=0.028), positive lymph nodes (=0.002) and lymphovascular invasion (=0.001). Finally, Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that VEGF-A up-regulation indicated a poor prognosis for overall survival (=0.039). In conclusions, VEGF-A may be used as a biomarker for evaluating both the biological behavior of tumor and the prognosis in patients with gastric adenocarcinoma.