Vasohibin-1 expression detected by immunohistochemistry correlates with prognosis in non-small cell lung cancer

Vasohibin-1 (VASH1) is a newly discovered angiogenesis inhibitor that is specifically expressed in human vascular endothelial cells in response to vascular endothelial growth factor and fibroblast growth factor-2. This study aimed to evaluate the expression of VASH1 in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and correlates its expression with the clinicopathological parameters and prognosis of the disease. Immunohistochemical analysis was used to determine the expression of VASH1 in NSCLC tissue and adjacent normal tissue from 84 patients. The relationship between VASH1 expression and clinicopathological indicators was examined with the chi-squared test. Moreover, the survival rate was calculated with the Kaplan-Meier survivor curve. Finally, the correlation between the indicators and patient survival was estimated with Cox analysis. VASH1 was high expressed in 63.1% of NSCLC tissues versus 21.4% of adjacent tissues (P < 0.01). High VASH1 expression in NSCLC tissue was correlated with clinicopathological features including lymph node status (P = 0.024) and TNM stage (P = 0.036). The Kaplan-Meier curve indicated that the patients with high VASH1 expression had significantly shorter survival than those with low VASH1 expression. In the multivariate Cox regression model, high VASH1 expression was identified as an independent prognostic factor for patients with NSCLC. High VASH1 expression is predictive of poor prognosis of NSCLC, implying that VASH1 may be a promising new target for targeted therapies for NSCLC.