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Updated: May 22, 2026
An Orthotopic Bladder Cancer Model for Gene Delivery Studies
Published on: December 1, 2013
Circulating angiostatin, bFGF, and Tie2/TEK levels and their prognostic impact in bladder cancer
Tibor Szarvas1, Tobias Jäger, Viktoria Laszlo
1Department of Urology, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. sztibusz@gmail.com
Objective:
To assess the role and prognostic significance of angiostatin, basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), and tyrosine endothelial kinase (TEK/Tie2) in transitional cell bladder carcinoma.
Materials And Methods:
Angiostatin, bFGF, and TEK serum concentrations were measured in 82 bladder cancer patients and 20 age-matched healthy controls using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results were compared with clinicopathologic and follow-up data with the Mann-Whitney U test and Kaplan-Meier, univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses.
Results:
We found significantly decreased angiostatin and TEK serum levels and mildly elevated bFGF concentrations in samples of bladder cancer patients compared with controls (P < .001, P < .001, and P = .083, respectively). Furthermore, high TEK serum levels were correlated with poor disease-specific and metastasis-free survival in muscle-invasive bladder cancer (P = .013, P = .018), whereas angiostatin and bFGF concentrations did not show any correlation with patients' prognosis. Multivariate analysis revealed high TEK levels (<1.60 ng/mL) as borderline significant independent risk-factor of disease-specific survival (HR 1.83, 95% CI 0.97-3.44, P = .061) and metastasis-free survival (HR 2.65, 95% CI 0.93-7.55, P = .069).
Conclusion:
The characteristic differences in the circulating levels of angiostatin, TEK, and bFGF between patients and controls, suggest the presence of a tumor-induced proangiogenic milieu in bladder cancer. Serum TEK levels may contribute to a more reliable preoperative risk stratification in muscle-invasive bladder cancer and therefore may help to optimize therapeutic decisions.
