Department of Neurosurgery, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
Department of Neurosurgery, 1st Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Cancer Lett. 2014 Jul 10;349(1):61-6. doi: 10.1016/j.canlet.2014.03.031. Epub 2014 Apr 13.
Tumor stem cells have been implicated as cancer-initiating cells in malignant brain tumors. However, whether benign brain tumors also contain tumor stem cells are largely unexplored. Here, we investigated whether tumor stem-like cells were present in pituitary adenoma similar to malignant brain tumors. By immunocytochemistry, we found that pituitary adenoma tissues expressed neural stem cell marker. These cells could form neurospheres in vitro, expressed neural stem/progenitor cell markers and generated daughter cells with the capacity to differentiate into three neural lineages. Importantly, compared with non-invasive pituitary adenomas, we found that CD133 expression was significantly increased in invasive pituitary adenomas, suggesting that the proliferative capacity was correlated with the malignance of pituitary adenomas. Finally, invasive pituitary adenomas cells displayed lower proliferative ability than glioblastoma. Our data indicate that a subpopulation of stem/progenitor-like cells are present in pituitary adenomas, and these cells may be responsible for benign tumor initiation and maintenance.
肿瘤干细胞被认为是恶性脑肿瘤的起始细胞。然而，良性脑肿瘤是否也含有肿瘤干细胞还在很大程度上尚未得到探索。在这里，我们研究了垂体腺瘤中是否存在类似于恶性脑肿瘤的肿瘤干细胞样细胞。通过免疫细胞化学，我们发现垂体腺瘤组织表达神经干细胞标志物。这些细胞可以在体外形成神经球，表达神经干细胞/祖细胞标志物，并产生具有分化为三个神经谱系能力的子细胞。重要的是，与非侵袭性垂体腺瘤相比，我们发现 CD133 的表达在侵袭性垂体腺瘤中显著增加，这表明增殖能力与垂体腺瘤的恶性程度相关。最后，侵袭性垂体腺瘤细胞的增殖能力低于胶质母细胞瘤。我们的数据表明，垂体腺瘤中存在一小部分干细胞/祖细胞样细胞，这些细胞可能负责良性肿瘤的起始和维持。
