title: Alteration of serum and tumoral neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) isoforms in patients with brain tumors.
abstract: The neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) is involved in the intercellular junctions of neurons and glial cells. We investigated its relevance as a biomarker in gliomas which main characteristic is their high invasiveness. We studied by Western blot the pattern of serum NCAM bands in patients with gliomas (n = 34), with brain metastasis of different primary cancers (n = 27) and with benign brain tumors (n = 22)] compared with healthy controls (n = 69). For densitometric analysis NCAM bands > or = 130 kDa (HMW) and <130 kDa (LMW) were clustered. We observed that glioma patients presented higher NCAM HMW and lower NCAM LMW levels than control subjects (P < 0.01). A similar pattern was found in patients with brain metastasis or brain benign tumors, suggesting that the pattern of serum NCAM bands would be useful to detect brain tumor pathology. On the other hand, serum NCAM expression was not associated with the main clinicopathological features of gliomas, including overall survival. Interestingly, we found that 9/12 patients with glioma showed a significant decrease in NCAM HMW/LMW ratio between 1-3 months after successful tumor removal. Thus, serum NCAM could be a useful marker for monitoring treatment.NCAM expression was also analyzed at tissular level in 59 glioma sections from paraffined tumors. We observed that NCAM immunostaining was inversely correlated with the histological grade of malignancy, remaining this association in a multivariate analysis. Besides, loss of NCAM staining was significantly associated with bad prognosis in an univariate analysis.
authors.affiliation: Research Area of the Institute of Oncology Angel H. Roffo, University of Buenos Aires, Av. San Martin 5481, Buenos Aires, C1417DTB, Argentina.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Todaro
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Christiansen
authors.forename: Mirta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Varela
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Campodónico
authors.forename: M Guadalupe
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Pallotta
authors.forename: José
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lastiri
authors.forename: Eugenia
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sacerdote de Lustig
authors.forename: Elisa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bal de Kier Joffé
authors.forename: Lydia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Puricelli
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000097:blood / Q000378:metabolism*; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism; D001932:Brain Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000401:mortality / Q000556:secondary; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic / Q000502:physiology*; D005910:Glioma / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D008545:Melanoma / Q000378:metabolism / Q000556:secondary; D008875:Middle Aged; D019006:Neural Cell Adhesion Molecules / Q000097:blood / Q000378:metabolism*; D020033:Protein Isoforms; D012878:Skin Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D016019:Survival Analysis; D002583:Uterine Cervical Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D019006:Neural Cell Adhesion Molecules; D020033:Protein Isoforms