Quantitative Study of Invasiveness of Malignant Gliomas

1991 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 02670623
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Cerebral neurosurgery
• Research Institution: University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: NAGASHIMA Tadashi Univ of Tokyo, Medical Dept., Assistant, 医学部(病), 助手 (70217991)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): MATSUTANI Masao Univ of Tokyo, Medical Dept., Associate Professor, 医学部(病), 助教授 (90010454) ; TAKAKURA Kintomo Univ of Tokyo, Medical Dept., Professor, 医学部(病), 教授 (90109984)
• Project Period (FY): 1990 – 1991
• Keywords: malignant glioma / invasion / cell-cell adhesion / N-cadherin

Research Abstract

At presnt, it is still difficult to cure patients with malignant glial tumors, mainly because of invasive growth into surrounding normal brain tissue. To clarify the invasion of glial tumors, we studied one of the cell adhesion molecules, N-cadherin, which is responsible for cell-cell adhesion in neural tissue. In this study, we investigated the correlation between expression of N-cadherin mRNA in rat glioma cell lines 9L,C6, RG12 and the extent of adhesion of these cells evaluated by in vitro cell aggregation assay. In Northern blot analysis, three different sizes of N-cadherin transcripts were identified in all three rat glioma cell lines, wheres only two sizes of bands were recognized in normal brain tissue. The degree of expression of these three bands varied amang each band size as well as each cell line. Especially, the degree of expression of the largest band (5.2Kb) varied considerably, strong in RG12, medium in 9L and weak in C6, and the degree of expression was related to the extent of adhesion of these cell lines estimated by in vitro cell aggregation assay. These results suggest that N-cadherin plays a role in cell-cell adhesion in glioma cells, and is involved in the invasion of glial tumors.