A novel clinical role for angiopoietin-1 in malignant pleural mesothelioma

Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is an aggressive malignant tumour associated with asbestos exposure that has only a limited response to conventional therapy; therefore, diagnosing MPM early is very important. We have previously reported that angiopoietin (Ang)-1 was correlated with bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis. Here, we investigated the association of Ang-1 with the development of MPM cells, which originate from mesenchymal cells similar to lung fibroblasts, and demonstrated that Ang-1 stimulated the growth and migration of MPM cells in vitro. We also demonstrated that patients with MPM had significantly higher serum levels of Ang-1 in comparison to a population who had been exposed to asbestos but had not developed MPM. The patients with advanced-stage MPM showed higher levels of Ang-1 than the early-stage MPM patients and the Kaplan-Meier method revealed a significant correlation between serum Ang-1 levels and survival. We propose the possibility that Ang-1 plays an important role in MPM tumour growth and our data suggest that the serum concentration of Ang-1 could be useful as prognostic factor.