Abstract

The pivotal role of Epstein Barr virus latent membrane protein 1 (LMP-1) in angiogenesishas been concluded from several in vitro experiments. However, there were very limited and inconsistent data on the correlation between LMP-1 and angiogenesis from clinical samples. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the correlation between LMP-1 and angiogenesis from Indonesian nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Forty cases of paraffin embedded tissues were stained by immunohistochemistry for the expressions of LMP-1, proangiogenic factors including vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and interleukin (IL)-8, and von Willebrand factor (vWF) indicating microvessels density (MVD) as the final result of angiogenesis. The level of plasma VEGF₁₆₅ was determined by ELISA. The results showed that LMP-1 expression was neither correlated significantly with ¹⁰logMVD, ¹⁰log plasma and tissue VEGF, nor ¹⁰log IL-8 (r=0.273, p=0.088; r=-0.109, p=0.504; r=0.140, p=0.390 and r=0.274, p=0.087, respectively). However, there were trends that a higher expression of LMP-1 was followed by a higher expression of MVD, tissue VEGF and IL-8. In conclusion, our results may be supportive to the experimental findings on the role of LMP-1 in angiogenesis. Not less important, our study that also showed significant correlation between tissue VEGF and MVD and between IL-8 and MVD suggests a possible role for antiangiogenic therapy in nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

Key words: LMP-1, angiogenesis, NPC.