Expressions of Angiogenic and Apoptotic Markers in Soft Tissue Sarcoma

Angiogenic and apoptotic activity plays an important role in the development and progression of soft tissue sarcoma. Both anti-apoptotic and pro-apoptotic activity are directly associated in tumor cells and endothelial cells in this study supporting the role of endothelial cells in survival and regression of tumor cells in tumoregenesis. Thus, the inhibition of endothelial cell survival factor or activation of endothelial cell death is a promising prospect as a candidate for tumor therapy. We also demonstrate that anti-apoptotic activity is associated with tumor histologic subtypes which are commonly seen in synovial sarcoma. In addition, there is also diversity seen in angiogenesis and pro-apoptotic activity amongst the various histologic subtypes of STS eventhough it is not statistically significant. This indicates the potential of the above protein expression as a useful marker for diagnosis of specific histologic subtypes. We also have shown that high angiogenic activity is correlated with weak apoptotic activity. This indicates that increased angiogenic activity may inhibit apoptotic tumor cells death which leads to cell proliferation.