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Nuclear
expression of Survivin in paediatric ependymomas and choroid plexus tumours
correlates with morphologic tumour grade
Altura RA, Olshefski RS,
Jiang Y, Boue DR
Center
for Cancer Research, Columbus Children's Research Institute, College of Medicine
and Public Health, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA. altura@pediatrics.ohio-state.edu
Survivin is a gene that is widely expressed throughout the development of the
normal mammalian embryo.
Subcellular localisation of Survivin to both the nucleus and cytoplasm has
suggested multiple functional roles, including inhibition of cell death,
especially as demonstrated within a variety of malignant cell types, as well as
regulation of the mitotic spindle checkpoint.
The expression of Survivin has been associated with an adverse clinical outcome
in a large number of malignancies.
However, nuclear Survivin expression has been described as an independent
variable of favourable prognosis in two large clinical studies of breast and
gastric carcinomas.
Reports of Survivin expression in normal postnatal, differentiated tissues have
been restricted to cell types with high proliferative capacities, including
vascular endothelium, endometrium, colonic epithelium, and activated
lymphocytes.
Prior to this report, expression within the normal human brain had not been
characterised.
Here, we analyse the expression of Survivin in human brain sections obtained
from perinatal and paediatric autopsy cases.
We report a strikingly high level of expression of Survivin within normal
ependyma and choroid plexus (CP).
Analysis of corresponding neoplastic tissue in paediatric ependymomas and CP
tumours shows that expression of the nuclear form of Survivin correlates with
morphologic tumour grade, with a loss of nuclear expression associated with
progressive cytologic anaplasia.
This pattern of expression supports a hypothesis that Survivin plays a
functional role in normal ependymal growth and/or neural stem cell
differentiation, and that abnormally low levels of expression of the nuclear
form of this protein may be a marker of more aggressive disease and/or higher
morphologic grade in ependymal and CP tumours.
PMID: 14583779 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14583779&dopt=Abstract
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