Article
Expression of Cathepsin B (CB) by oligodendrogliomas
Expression von Cathepsin-B in Oligodendrogliom-Tumoren
Search Medline for
Authors
Published: | April 11, 2007 |
---|
Outline
Text
Objective: Degradation of extracellular matrix (ECM) is an essential prerequisite for invasive growth of brain tumours. There is evidence from investigations of CNS-neoplasmas that secreted proteolytic enzymes may facilitate tumour invasion by partially degradation of ECM. Among the enzymes which may be involved are members of cysteine proteinase superfamily, especially Cathepsin B, which is a lysosomal tissue proteine and responsible for degradation of ECM and basal membrane (BM) components in gliomas.
Purpose:In this study the purpose was to demonstrate the CB-expression and correlation with tumour dedifferentiation in populations of oligodendrogliomas, and the examination of the influence of CB on the leptomeninx infiltration by oligodendroglial tumours.
Method: 78 oligodendroglial cases were examined immunohistochemically for CB-EXpression (male: 34, female: 44). The tumours were classified as grade II (n=46), grade III (anaplastic oligodendrogliomas, n=18) and IV (glioblastomas with oligodendroglial growth pattern, n=14). The age varied between 17 and 70 years (mean age 47.5 for female, 43.7 for male).
Results:In Grade II oligodendrogliomas CB was detected in 17 from 46 cases, in grade III 9 from 18 cases and in grade IV tumors in 10 from 14 cases (p=0.017). In addition to correlation of grading and CB- expression, grading also correlated significantly with age of the patients (r=0.327, p=0.03). Kaplan Meyer survival statistics showed a mean survival time of 109 months, however, in multuvariate Cox regression computed for grading, gender, age and CB-expression only tumour grading was staistically significant (p=0.002).
Conclusions: Oligodendroglial tumors sxpress CB and CB-expression correlates with tumour grading. CB may participates in the in the proteolysis and decomposition of ECM and BM components such as laminin, fibronectin and type IV collagen. It can be speculated that infiltration of leptomeninx by oligodendrogliomas amonmg other factors depends on the CB-expression, which has a reciprocal relationschip with the meas survival time of patients and therefore can be considered as a prognostic indicator.