VEGF-A 165 FAMILY OF ISOFORMS AS PREDICTIVE BIOMARKERS IN PATIENTS WITH NON-SQUAMOUS NON-SMALL CELL LUNG CANCER (NSCLC) TREATED WITH BEVACIZUMAB

e19109 Background: Bevacizumab is a recombinant monoclonal humanized antibody to vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) that improves Time to Progression (TTP) in patients with advanced non-squamous NSCLC in combination with a doublet of platins, but currently no proven predictive markers exist. The VEGF-A 165 splice variant has been described as the most abundant and active isoform in cancer. Exon 8 splice modifications of VEGF 165 generates the VEGF-A 165a family of isoforms, which has a pro-angiogenic effect, and VEGF-A 165b family, with an anti-angiogenic activity. This study is aimed to explore the role of VEGF165a and VEGF165b expression in tumors as predictive biomarkers of efficacy in patients with NSCLC treated with platins plus bevacizumab. Methods: 22 patients were included (20 adenocarcinomas and 2 large cell carcinomas): 5 received carboplatin-taxol-bevacizumab, 14 carboplatin-taxotere-bevacizumab and 3 cisplatin-gemcitabine-bevacizumab. Total RNA was isolated by RNeasy FFPE procedure. VEG...