Quantitative and Immunohistochemical Evaluation of PDGF-C Expression in Gliomas

Abstract

The neovascularization and angiogenesis play an important role in the development of gliomas, specially on high-grade tumors like anaplastic astrocytomas and glioblastomas. The PDGF-C expression can be found in several organs like kidneys, lungs, brain, heart, spinal cord, pancreas, adrenal gland, skeletal muscle, ovaries, prostate and placenta. In vivo experiments conducted on mice showed that PDGF-C is responsible for the fibroblasts proliferation, new epithelial cells migration, neutrophil infiltration and neovascularization during wound reparing. The PDGF-C acts stimulating the differentiation of endothelial progenitor cells in mature endothelial cells and stimulating the development of new smooth muscle cells during arteriogenesis. It has been demonstrated the role of PDGF-C in neoplasias like Ewing's sarcoma and, more specifically to the central nervous system (CNS), medulloblastomas and gliomas, contributing to the maturation and stabilization of new blood vessels inside the tumors. This project intends to evaluate, quantitatively and qualitatively, by the means of RT-PCR and immunohistochemical analysis, the genetic and proteic expression of PDGF-C in already estabilished tumor cells lineages, samples of gliomas from patients and non-neoplastic control tissues, trying to estabilish a pattern of PDGF-C expression in neoplasias of the CNS, showing a possible correlation between this protein and the tumorigenesis or the malignancy of such tumors.