Serum vascular endothelial growth factor C & D in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma

Abstract

Metastasis to regional lymph nodes via lymphatic vessels plays a key role in oral cancer progression. Tumor lymphangiogenesis is known to promote lymphatic metastasis and vascular endothelial growth factor C and D  are the critical activator of tumor lymphangiogenesis during the process of metastasis. In this study, we evaluated the correlation between pretreatment serum levels of VEGF-C&D in oral cancer and clinicopathological features in patients with oral cancer. Serum VEGF-C and sVEGF-D were measured by enzyme-linked immunoadsorbent assay (ELISA) on 98 patients with oral cancer, 49 cases with healthy normal controls. Serum VEGF-C and sVEGF-D levels were significantly higher in patients with oral cancer than in the normal healthy group (p < 0.001 and p = 0.001, respectively). Subgroup analysis showed that lymph node metastasis (p=0.001) and histological grading (p=0.05) were correlated with elevated level of VEGF-C. Elevated level of VEGF-D were associated with lymph node metastasis (p=0.001) only. Serum VEGF-C AUC was higher than the VEGF-D AUC in detecting lymph node metastasis. These results suggest that pretreatment serum levels of VEGF-C & VEGF-D reflect lymph node metastasis and advanced stage of oral cancer.