Study on the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor, Flt-1 and angiogenesis in invasive pituitary adenomas

Objective To study the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and its receptor (Flt-1), and to explore the relationship among the expression, microvessel density (MVD) and angiogenesis in invasive pituitary adenomas.Methods Fifty-two surgical samples of pituitary adenomas were stained immunohistochemically with antibodies of VEGF and Flt-1 to investigate their expression, and MVD was assayed by detecting the expression of CD34. A comparison analysis was made to find the difference between invasive pituitary adenomas and non-invasive pituitary adenomas.Results Both VEGF and its receptor, as well as MVD highly correlated with the invasiveness of pituitary adenomas(P0.01).Conclusion VEGF may play an important role in invasiveness of pituitary by promoting tumor angiogenesis. The mechanism needs to be studied further.