NEW YORK (Reuters Health) May 29 - At the time of diagnosis of primary melanoma, high blood levels of the protein HU177 associated with tumor angiogenesis identifies a subset of patients with poor prognosis, according to research to be presented Monday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting in Orlando.
"HU177 increases a tumor's capacity to grow and spread and there is a lot of preclinical data that show how this marker contributes to angiogenesis," study presenter Dr. Iman Osman of New York University School of Medicine noted in a telephone interview with Reuters Health.
"Our data with long follow-up shows that higher levels of HU177 correlate with recurrence and death in melanoma patients," Dr. Osman added.
Among 209 melanoma patients whose serum levels of HU177 were determined at diagnosis, 38 (18%) developed recurrences and 34 (16%) died during a median follow up of 54.9 months.
In a Kaplan Meier analysis, serum HU177 levels greater than 3.7 ng/mL (the median) were associated with a higher rate of melanoma recurrence (p = 0.04) and increasing mortality (p = 0.01), the investigators found.
In multivariate analysis controlling for tumor thickness and histology, HU177 at this level remained an independent prognostic factor for disease-free survival and overall survival, with hazard ratios of 2.01 and 2.23, respectively.
"Testing for this marker in the blood at the time of diagnosis can help us determine what will happen to this patient and may help direct treatment," Dr. Osman said.
"We need to consider giving adjuvant anti-angiogenic therapy, not necessarily anti-HU177, early on for patients who are shedding this proangiogenic marker in the serum and not wait until the tumor metastasizes and becomes very aggressive," Dr. Osman added.
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