We expected that benign and malignant cartilagenous tumors may be distinguished, and that the growth factors may be correlated with oncologic outcomes according to their expression of growth factors.

Immunohistochemical study of some growth factors (bFGF, IGF, TGF-beta1, TGF-beta3) were performed upon paraffin-embedded tissues of 11 enchondroma and 25 chondrosarcoma patients who were treated surgically in our hospital. The Envision+system was used to performed the immunohistochemistry.

bFGF was more highly expressed in the enchondroma group (p=0.04), and IGF-I was expressed more so in grade 3 chondrosarcoma than the other grades (p=0.012). The co-expressions of IGF-I and TGF-beta3 were remarkable in the chondrosarcoma group (p<0.001). Four metastases developed among the eleven patients of the TGF-beta3 expression group, and TGF-beta3 expression was found to correlate with distant metastasis in chondrosarcoma (p=0.026). Differences in recurrences or metastases according to the surgical margin between factor-expression group and factor-non-expression group were not significant in all growth factors.

In chondrosarcoma, TGF-beta3 is closely related to metastasis. In addition, bFGF and IGF-I may be a guideline for the differentiation of benign and malignant cartilagenous tumors and of help when deciding the treatment plan.