Aim: This study was designed to investigate the predictive and prognostic values of serum vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) level in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients treated with platinum-based chemotherapy.
Methods: Patients’ peripheral blood samples were collected prior to chemotherapy and after 1 week of the third cycle of combination chemotherapy. Serum VEGF levels were evaluated through Luminex multiplex technique. Between September 2011 and August 2015, a total of 135 consecutive advanced or recurrent histologically verified NSCLC patients were enrolled in the study. Moreover, all the patients received platinum-based combination chemotherapy as a first-line treatment.
Results: No significant associations were found between pretreatment serum VEGF levels and clinical characteristics, such as sex (P =0.0975), age (P =0.2522), stage (P =0.1407), lymph node metastasis (P =0.6409), tumor location (P =0.3520), differentiated degree (P =0.5608), pathological (histological) type (P =0.4885), and response to treatment (P =0.9859). The VEGF load per platelet (VEGF^PLT) levels were not correlated with sex, age, primary tumor site, and pathological type in NSCLC patients (all P >0.05). The median survival time of progression-free survival (PFS) was 6.407 and 5.29 months in the low and high groups, respectively, when using 280 pg/mL VEGF level as the cutoff point (P =0.024).
Conclusion: In conclusion, the serum VEGF levels were found to be a poor prognostic biomarker for the efficacy of platinum-based chemotherapy in terms of PFS, but it was not shown to be a suitable predictive marker for clinical response to platinum-based chemotherapy.
Keywords: non-small cell lung cancer, VEGF, progression-free survival, platinum, chemotherapy, Luminex multiplex, prognosis

摘要视频链接：Serum VEGF predicts a poor prognosis in NSCLC