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• Preoperative radiotherapy

VEGF as a predictor of rectal tumor response to preoperative radiotherapy

VEGF correlates with poor response to neoadjuvant radiotherapy⁷

Zlobec et al showed that patients with VEGF-overexpressing rectal tumors had poorer response to preoperative radiation therapy than patients whose tumors did not overexpress VEGF (P=0.0035). This chart shows the distribution of VEGF scores for the response groups. White bars, complete response; purple bars, no response.⁷

Cancer. 2005;104(11):2517-2521. © 2005 American Cancer Society. This material is reproduced with permission of Wiley-Liss, Inc., a subsidiary of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Neoadjuvant radiotherapy is particularly important in rectal cancer because it may allow for tumor downstaging or regression, leading to greater sphincter preservation. In an effort to determine predictive markers of response to preoperative radiotherapy, Zlobec and colleagues conducted a study using preradiation biopsies of 59 patients treated with neoadjuvant radiotherapy for rectal carcinoma. They found that vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) overexpression significantly correlated with lack of response to neoadjuvant radiotherapy (P=0.0035), indicating that VEGF may be a useful predictive marker for response to preoperative radiation therapy in rectal cancer.⁷

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