Prognostic Values of Tissue and Serum Angiogenic Growth Factors Depend on the Phenotypic Subtypes of Colorectal Cancer

We classified colorectal cancer (CRC) patients into four phenotypic subgroups and investigated the prognostic value of angiogenic growth factors across subgroups. Preoperative serum concentrations and tissue expressions of VEGF, bFGF, and PDGF-bb were determined among 322 CRC patients. We classified patients into phenotypic subgroups ( , , , and ) according to a method described in our earlier work. Among the subgroup, patients with high serum concentrations of VEGF, bFGF, or PDGF-bb exhibited a significantly improved prognosis. Moreover, those with high VEGF tissue expressions exhibited a significantly improved prognosis among patients in the subgroup. Among patients, a high VEGF serum expression is associated with a worse prognosis. A high serum bFGF concentration is associated with a favorable prognostic factor among patients with a tumor phenotype. A high PDGF-bb tissue expression is associated with non-metastasized disease and with the , , and subtypes. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that the prognostic value of angiogenic growth factors differs between phenotypic subtypes.