Obesity is a predictive biomarker of poor benefit from single-agent bevacizumab therapy in recurrent ovarian cancer patients.

Purpose: Bevacizumab, an anti-angiogenic agent targeting vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), is widely used for the treatment of ovarian cancer. However, no predictive biomarkers of clinical outcome for bevacizumab therapy have been identified. Adipose tissue secretes various growth factors, including VEGF, which may neutralize bevacizumab and attenuate its effects. Therefore, we evaluated whether obesity is a predictive biomarker of clinical outcome in ovarian cancer patients treated with single-agent bevacizumab.

Methods: Thirty patients with recurrent ovarian cancer treated with single-agent bevacizumab were studied. Body mass index (BMI) and visceral fat area (VFA) were measured to assess the presence of obesity. VFA was measured using computed tomography volume-analyzing software. The association of BMI and VFA with clinical outcomes were evaluated.

Results: High BMI and high VFA were significantly correlated with progressive disease (p=0.0195 and p=0.0352, respectively). A significant correlation was identified between high BMI and progressive disease in multivariate analysis (p=0.0459). Furthermore, there was a trend toward shorter progression-free survival and a significant shortening of overall survival in high-BMI patients compared with low-BMI patients (p=0.101 and p=0.0417, respectively).

Conclusions: This study demonstrated that obesity is a predictive biomarker of poor benefit from single-agent bevacizumab therapy in recurrent ovarian cancer patients. Obesity may be a useful benchmark for the administration of bevacizumab in daily clinical practice.