BRIEF COMMUNICATION Expression of Basic Fibroblast Growth Factor in Primary Human Renal Tumors: Correlation With Poor

Renal cell carcinomas are, char-acteristically, hypervascular tumors (7). This trait has been attributed to the production by tumor cells of angiogenic growth factors such as basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), which have been isolated from tissue extracts of human renal cell car-cinomas (2J) and identified in the serum (4) and urine (5) of patients with renal cell carcinoma. bFGF is a heparin-binding angiogenic protein that has been implicated in the growth and metastases of a variety of other solid tumors (6-11). The role of bFGF in the patho-genesis of renal cell carcinoma re-mains largely undefined. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the expression and localiza-tion patterns of bFGF in 62 primary renal cancers and to correlate the results with clinicopathologic features. We obtained renal tumor specimens that were surgically removed from 62 patients (median age, 60.5 years; range, 28-80 years) who were under-going radical nephrectomy at Memo-rial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Of these patients, 23 were men and 39 were women. Resected tissue was immediately brought to the pathology department, embedded in O.C.T. com