P-013 Expression of VEGFs and VEGFRs according to TNMc and TNMq. Reality or fiction?

Biomarkers in tissue from patients with upper gastrointestinal cancers treated with erlotinib and bevacizumab

“…This confirms the prognostic value of VEGFR-2 described in several other studies in patients not treated with bevacizumab. 18,20,21 Previous studies of VEGFR-2 in patients treated with bevacizumab have not shown a correlation with efficacy, 13 however, Cohen et al found a correlation between response and the ratio between phosphorylated VEGFR-2 and non-phosphorylated VEGFR-2 in tumor tissue from patients with head and neck EGFR, KRAS, are predictive of no effect of EGFR targeted therapy. 7,8 Preliminary data suggest that specific mutations in other downstream signal mediators, such as BRAF and PI3K, and loss of PTEN, an inhibitor of PI3K, could be predictive of no response as well.…”

“…16,17 High VEGF-A expression has in previous studies been shown to correlate to poor outcome in patients not treated with bevacizumab. [18][19][20][21] This possible discrepancy between patients treated and not treated with bevacizumab indicates that high expression of VEGF-A in tumor detected by IHC might be a bevacizumab-specific positive predictive factor. VEGF-A is the target for bevacizumab, it is therefore intriguing to speculate, that tumors with high expression of VEGF-A would respond better to bevacizumab, since the target is present in the tumor.…”