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Testing
for glioma uniformity by Olig expression
A.
Ohnishi, M. Tsuda, Y. Sawamura, H. Sawa, K. Nagashima
Hokkaido
university school of medicine, Sapporo, Japan
It
has been previously reported that a specific group of oligodendrogliomas is
susceptible to adjuvant therapy.
Hence, the biological characteristics of oligodendrogliomas should be examined.
A family of olig genes is expressed in cells of oligodendroglial lineage and
functions as transcription factors, and high levels of expression of olig genes
have been demonstrated in oligodendrogliomas.
To clarify the significance of olig gene expression in gliomas, we evaluated the
levels of olig1 and olig2 mRNAs in gliomas.
An antibody to olig2 was raised and representative cases were examined by
immunohistochemistry to detect expression levels and localization of olig2
protein.
High levels of expression of Olig1 and Olig2 mRNA were detected in anaplastic
oligodendrogliomas and anaplastic astrocytomas.
Expression of olig1 and olig2 mRNA in grade 4 glioblastomas was significantly
lower than that in grade2 and grade3 gliomas. (P<0.05).
Staining positivity of olig2 was more than 90% in most of anaplastic
oligodendrogliomas but only 37% in anaplastic astrocytomas.
Although OLIG expression was detected in a range of gliomas, anaplastic
oligodendrogliomas can be identified by the high staining positivity using
immunohistochemistry.
Tumor heterogeneity is a major obstacle in developing therapies for gliomas.
We speculate that the sensitivity to adjuvant therapy exhibited by anaplastic
oligodendroglioma is due to the tumor being composed of genetically uniform
cells.
© Copyright 2003
American Society of Clinical Oncology All rights
reserved worldwide
Source: http://www.asco.org/ac/1,1003,_12-002489-00_18-002003-00_19-00102453-00_29-00A,00.asp?cat=CNS+Tumors&parent=
Central+Nervous+System+Tumors&returnpid=2325&SubCat_ID=4
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