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61st Annual Meeting of the German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC) as part of the Neurowoche 2010
Joint Meeting with the Brazilian Society of Neurosurgery on the 20 September 2010

German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC)

21 - 25 September 2010, Mannheim

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Gliomas derived from human glioma-initiating cells show no specific expression of GFAP, YKL-40 and S100b

Meeting Abstract

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  • Mirna Tenan - Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Geneva, Switzerland
  • Bawarjan Schatlo - Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Geneva, Switzerland
  • Denis Marino - Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Geneva, Switzerland
  • Marc Kotowski - Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Geneva, Switzerland
  • Karl Schaller - Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Geneva, Switzerland
  • Ivan Radovanovic - Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Geneva, Switzerland
  • Virginie Clément - Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Geneva, Switzerland

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie. 61. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie (DGNC) im Rahmen der Neurowoche 2010. Mannheim, 21.-25.09.2010. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2010. DocP1709

doi: 10.3205/10dgnc180, urn:nbn:de:0183-10dgnc1808

Published: September 16, 2010

© 2010 Tenan et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

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Objective: GFAP, YKL-40 and S100b can be found in a proportion of human glioma samples. Due to their relative novelty and lack of a solid body of independent studies to date, none of these biomarkers have yet gained wide-spread acceptance in the neuro-oncological community. Important is the fact that it is not known whether the cells which express these markers are tumor-initiating cells or cells from the bulk representing the differentiated part of the tumor.

Methods: We recently published a procedure to differentiate cancer-initiating cells (CIC) from the cells of the tumor bulk within brain tumors (Clément et al, nature methods 2010). Purified CIC from grade IV glioma were implanted in n=3 mice as described previously to test the expression of the above mentioned protein markers. Frozen sections of the mouse brains implanted with the purified CICs were then immunostained using commercially available kits for GFAP, YKL-40 and S100b.

Results: GFAP, YKL-40 nor S100b showed low or almost no expression in tumor tissue compared to the surrounding brain. More importantly, none of these 3 known biomarker candidates were sufficient to tag the CIC population in the tumor, suggesting that GFAP, YKL-40 and S100b cannot be defined as biomarkers for cancer-iniating cells.

Conclusions: Despite their previously described properties to potentially serve as biomarkers for high grade gliomas, GFAP, YKL-40 and S100b seem irrelevant and inappropriate markers in CICs-derived glioma.