Anna Goussia, Nafsika Simou, Flora Zagouri, Kyriaki Manousou, Georgios Lazaridis, Helen Gogas, Angelos Koutras, Maria Sotiropoulou, George Pentheroudakis, Dimitrios Bafaloukos, Christos Markopoulos, Helen Patsea, Christos Christodoulou, Pavlos Papakostas, Thomas Zaramboukas, Epaminontas Samantas, Paris Kosmidis, Vasileios Venizelos, Charisios Karanikiotis, George Papatsibas, Grigorios Xepapadakis, Konstantine T Kalogeras, Christina Bamia, Meletios-Athanassios Dimopoulos, Vassiliki Malamou-Mitsi, George Fountzilas, and Anna Batistatou
Several studies support an important role of angiogenesis in breast cancer growth and metastasis. The main objectives of the study were to investigate the immunohistochemical expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) family ligands (VEGF-A and VEGF-C) and receptors (VEGFR1, VEGFR2 and VEGFR3) in breast cancer and their associations with clinicopathological parameters, cancer subtypes/subgroups and patient outcome. Formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tumor tissue samples were collected from early-stage breast cancer patients treated with anthracycline-based chemotherapy within a randomized trial. Immunohistochemistry was performed on serial 2.5 μm thick tissue sections from tissue microarray blocks. High VEGF-A, VEGF-C, VEGFR1, VEGFR2 and VEGFR3 protein expression was observed in 11.8% (N = 87), 80.8% (N = 585), 28.1% (N = 202), 64.6% (N = 359) and 71.8% (N = 517) of the cases, respectively. Significant associations were observed among all proteins (all p-values