Correlations between intratumoral vascular network and tumoral architecture in prostatic adenocarcinoma.

The authors made a preliminary assessment of possible correlations between the intratumoral vascular density (IVD) and the architectural tumoral patterns described by Gleason. The studied material consisted of samples obtained by transurethral resection from 34 patients diagnosed with prostatic adenocarcinoma. Ten fields, five for dominant and five for secondary identified patterns of each case, with no necrosis were selected randomly from CD34 immunomarked sections using ×20 objective. IVD increased with Gleason pattern both for the entire group, but also for "solid" phenotype group of subtypes up to pattern 4, respectively subtype 4B. In "necrotizing" phenotype group of subtypes, IVD had a decreasing trend from the better-differentiated subtypes to the poorest one. These preliminary data showed that the intratumoral vascular network reacts differently to the loss of tumoral differentiation in the two groups of Gleason subtypes suggesting the existence of two different populations of malignant cells.