Clinical significance of growth factor receptor EGFR and angiogenesis regulator VEGF‑R2 in patients with ovarian cancer at FIGO stages I-II.

The aim of the present retrospective cohort study was to investigate the prognostic effect of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and the angiogenesis regulator vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 (VEGF‑R2) on disease-free survival (DFS) rate and recurrent disease, and their association with clinicopathological characteristics in 131 patients with International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stages I-II epithelial ovarian cancer. The techniques of tissue microar-rays and immunohistochemistry were used for the positive detection of the markers. The frequency of positive staining in tumors for EGFR was 24% and for VEGF‑R2 was 77%. Across the cohort, there was a total of 34/131 recurrences (26%) and the 5‑year DFS rate was 68%. In a multivariate logistic regression analysis with recurrent disease as the endpoint, FIGO stage (OR=9.7), type (I/II) of tumor (OR=3.0) and VEGF‑R2 status (OR=0.2) were all found to be independent predictive factors in the cohort of patients (n=131). For patients with non‑serous tumors (n=78), the FIGO stage (OR=76), type (I/II) of tumor (OR=44), EGFR status (OR=0.05) and VEGF‑R2 status (OR=0.008) were all significant and independent predictive factors. On comparing the four subgroups, in terms of concomitant EGFR and VEGF‑R2 status, in a survival analysis, the subgroup of patients (n=21) with concomitant positive expression of EGFR and VEGF‑R2 had a 5‑year DFS rate of 100%. Therefore, the prognostic effect of EGFR and VEGF‑R2 for recurrent disease and survival rates was confirmed by the above findings. Certain results in the present study were not in line with results from previous studies on the prognostic effect of EGFR and VEGF‑R2. An increasing number of preclinical and clinical observations have shown that the process of angiogenesis remains to be fully elucidated. Therefore, one of the challenges for future ovarian cancer investigations is to identify which biomarkers may be used as predictive and prognostic markers.