TY - JOUR T1 - A novel clinical role for angiopoietin-1 in malignant pleural mesothelioma JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 1099 LP - 1105 DO - 10.1183/09031936.00154009 VL - 36 IS - 5 AU - C. Tabata AU - N. Hirayama AU - R. Tabata AU - A. Yasumitsu AU - S. Yamada AU - A. Murakami AU - S. Iida AU - K. Tamura AU - K. Fukuoka AU - K. Kuribayashi AU - T. Terada AU - T. Nakano Y1 - 2010/11/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/36/5/1099.abstract N2 - Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is an aggressive malignant tumour associated with asbestos exposure that has only a limited response to conventional therapy; therefore, diagnosing MPM early is very important. We have previously reported that angiopoietin (Ang)-1 was correlated with bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis. Here, we investigated the association of Ang-1 with the development of MPM cells, which originate from mesenchymal cells similar to lung fibroblasts, and demonstrated that Ang-1 stimulated the growth and migration of MPM cells in vitro. We also demonstrated that patients with MPM had significantly higher serum levels of Ang-1 in comparison to a population who had been exposed to asbestos but had not developed MPM. The patients with advanced-stage MPM showed higher levels of Ang-1 than the early-stage MPM patients and the Kaplan–Meier method revealed a significant correlation between serum Ang-1 levels and survival. We propose the possibility that Ang-1 plays an important role in MPM tumour growth and our data suggest that the serum concentration of Ang-1 could be useful as prognostic factor. ER -