Increased microvessel density in involved organs from patients with HTLV-I associated adult T cell leukemia lymphoma

Adult T-cell leukemia-lymphoma (ATLL) is a rapidly progressive lymphoproliferative disorder secondary to infection with the human T cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I). The role of angiogenesis in the development and prognosis of many hematologic malignancies is established. We have previously shown that ATLL derived cells secrete high levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and basic fibroblast growth factor (b-FGF), induce endothelial tube formation in vitro and establish functional gap junction-mediated communication with endothelial cells. We also demonstrated that plasma from ATLL and tropical spastic paraparesis/HTLV-I associated myelopathy patients exhibit very high levels of VEGF and b-FGF. Recently, we showed that treatment with the combination of zidovudine and interferon alpha reduced both HTLV-I proviral load and importantly VEGF plasma levels suggesting a potential anti-angiogenic effect of this therapy. In this report, we evaluated microvessel density (MVD) in involved organs from 20 patients with ATLL, as compared to normal organs from matched controls. We show evidence of significantly increased MVD in all tested involved organs from ATLL patients, suggesting that angiogenesis plays an important role in the development or organ invasion of ATLL, and could represent a potentially interesting target for anti-angiogenic therapy of ATLL.