Clinical significance of Polycomb gene expression in brain tumors

Molecular Cancer

Short Communication

William L Farrar¹  Elaine M Hurt¹  Francesco Crea² 

[1] Cancer Stem Cell Section, Laboratory of Cancer Prevention, National Cancer Institute at Frederick, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, Frederick, MD, USA;Cancer Stem Cell Section, Laboratory of Cancer Prevention, National Cancer Institute at Frederick, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, Frederick, MD, USA;Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy;

关键词: Brain Tumor;    Central Nervous System Tumor;    Pediatric Brain Tumor;    EZH2 Expression;    Oncomine Database;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1476-4598-9-265

 received in 2010-05-05, accepted in 2010-09-30,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Polycomb group (PcG) proteins are crucial for neural cancer stem cell (NCSC) self-renewal. However, the relative expression levels of PcG genes in different subtypes of brain tumors, their prognostic role and their effects on cellular pathways have not been investigated. For this purpose, we queried the Oncomine database and found that 4 PcG genes (EZH2, RBBP7, SUZ12, YY1) are specifically expressed in brain tumors. EZH2 expression increases with tumor grade in adult and pediatric brain tumors, and is a poor prognostic factor. In glioblastoma, EZH2 inhibits differentiation, and activates cancer-, cell cycle- and cellular movement-related genes. In keeping with previously published data, our results suggest that EZH2 is both a prognostic factor and a promising therapy target in brain tumors.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Crea et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.