Cancer presence can lead to elevated circulating VEGF levels in blood tests, which can be measured to monitor tumor progression or active metastasis.
"Cancer being present, the patient will have high VEGF levels in their blood tests. That's one of the ways you can kind of monitor what's going on in cancer is by running and looking at VEGF levels. If it's increasing, there's probably active metastases trying to happen or happening, right?" (said at 0:45:46)
While research studies show that circulating levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) are frequently elevated in patients with various malignancies and often correlate with tumor burden, lymph node involvement, or metastatic progression, circulating VEGF is not an established or standardized clinical biomarker for routinely monitoring active metastases or cancer progression. A major confounding factor is pre-analytical variability (for instance, significant VEGF release from platelets during serum clotting) and poor specificity, as VEGF is also elevated in non-malignant inflammatory and angiogenic processes.
- context: Validation of blood collection procedures for the determination of circulating vascular en… (The International journal of biological markers 2001)
"Studies on circulating VEGF have reported mixed results, possibly due to a lack of standardization of the pre-analytical phase. ... Clotting time increased the release of VEGF, which reached a plateau between 2 and 4 hours. The percent increase of VEGF at 2 hours ranged from 118% to 4,515% (median 327%) compared to samples centrifuged within 10 min from withdrawal." (abstract, background and results)
pubmed - supports: Serum vascular endothelial growth factor-C and vascular endothelial growth factor level in… (Journal of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Medical sciences = Hua zhong ke ji da xue xue bao. Yi xue Ying De wen ban = Huazhong keji daxue xuebao. Yixue Yingdewen ban 2006)
"Serum VEGF-C and VEGF levels were higher in patients with colorectal carcinoma than in healthy controls. Patients with lymph node metastasis had higher serum VEGF-C and VEGF levels than those without lymph node metastasis." (abstract, results, passage verified)
pubmedfull study (doi) - supports: Circulating Growth and Angiogenic Factors and Lymph Node Status in Early-stage Breast Canc… (Anticancer research 2016)
"We found elevated IGF1 and VEGF levels in patients with lymph node metastases compared to controls (p=0.0179 and p=0.0091, respectively) and in patients with ALND (p=0.0337 and p=0.0438, respectively). Circulating IGF1 and VEGF levels may predict the presence of lymph node metastases and help in the decision to avoid ALND in patients with early-stage breast cancer." (abstract, results and conclusions, passage verified)
pubmed - partial: Circulating VEGF and eNOS variations as predictors of outcome in metastatic colorectal can… (Scientific reports 2017)
"B-treated patients with >30% reduction in eNOS and VEGF levels from baseline to the first clinical evaluation showed better OS than the others ... A reduction in eNOS and VEGF expression from baseline to the first clinical evaluation may indicate a response to B." (abstract, results and conclusions)
pubmedfull study (doi)