Artikel
NCAM-140 is down-regulated in human gliomas with increasing WHO grade – final results
NCAM-140 sinkt mit steigenden WHO-Grad in humanen Gliomen – finale Ergebnisse
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Veröffentlicht: | 8. Mai 2006 |
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Objective: Gliomas interact with their microenvironment. NCAM-140 is one of the best known interaction molecules. It is expressed in neurons and glia, but also in gliomas. We want to investigate NCAM-140-expression in human gliomas.
Methods: Staining was performed on sections of 171 human gliomas and 39 other intracranial tumors with polyclonal antibodies to NCAM-140. Morphology was characterized by hematoxylin/eosin. Autopsy material of 20 patients served as control. Densitometry was done with Image 1.41 for Mac computers. SPSS version 13.0 was used for statistics.
Results: With the first statistically evaluated 92 tumors, we confirmed our recent results that have shown a down-regulation of NCAM-140 expression in human gliomas of different histology with increasing tumor grade according to WHO. Initial macroscopy and microscopy enabled visualization of major differences of NCAM-140-expression status. This was confirmed by densitometry. Mean density of NCAM-140 immunoreactivity was 152.44 (±5.12) in control brain tissue and was significantly different from all other glioma entities. Mean densities of 144.01 (±4.82) in low-grade glioma and 142.57 (±6.07) in anaplastic glioma were significantly different from each other, and were different from mean density of NCAM-140 immunoreactivity in glioblastomas of 140.51 (±2.62) with statistical significance. Mixed gliomas overtake an intermediate position with respect to their NCAM-140-positivity. Four glioblastomas out of 22 expressed unusual high amounts of NCAM-140 that can be compared with healthy brain tissue. Whether this is related to a better outcome remains to be investigated. Optic density of NCAM-140-expression in other intracranial tumors was significantly different from that of gliomas.
Conclusions: The NCAM-140-expression is inversely correlated to WHO grade in human gliomas, with the glioblastomas demonstrating negativity in the very most cases. The expression profile of NCAM-140 was typical only for gliomas and differed strictly from that of other intracranial tumors. Further studies are mandatory to correlate the NCAM-140 expression profile with the prognosis data of patients and are on the way.