Roukas Dimitrios, Kouzoupis Anastasios, Spyropoulou Despoina, Tsiambas Evangelos, Mastronikolis Stylianos, Falidas Evangelos, Tsouvelas George, Ragos Vasileios, Lazaris Andreas C, Kavantzas Nikolaos
Department of Psychiatry, 417 Army Equity Fund Hospital (NIMTS), Athens, GRC.
Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, GRC.
Cureus. 2022 Jun 21;14(6):e26182. doi: 10.7759/cureus.26182. eCollection 2022 Jun.
Caspases (cysteine-aspartic proteases) represent a family of enzymes that critically influence cell homeostasis by being involved in inflammation and apoptosis mechanisms. Meningiomas demonstrate the most common intracranial primary central nervous system tumors in adults worldwide.
Our purpose was to explore the role of caspase 8 expression in meningiomas' pathological features.
A total of 50 meningioma cases were included in the study, comprising a broad spectrum of histopathological sub-types. An immunohistochemistry assay was applied on tissue microarray cores followed by digital image analysis.
Overexpression of caspase 8 protein was observed in 21/50 (42%) cases, whereas the rest of them (29/50, 58%) demonstrated moderate to low levels of the molecule. Caspase 8 overall expression was statistically significantly correlated to grade of the examined tumors and to mitotic index (p=0.001,p=0.002, respectively).
Caspase 8 aberrant expression is observed in meningiomas associated with their differentiation grade and mitotic activity. Targeted therapeutic strategies focused on enhancing caspase 8 expression and also inducing the overall apoptotic activity should be a very promising approach in rationally handling sub-groups of meningioma patients.
半胱天冬酶（半胱氨酸天冬氨酸蛋白酶）是一类通过参与炎症和细胞凋亡机制来严重影响细胞稳态的酶家族。脑膜瘤是全球成年人中最常见的颅内原发性中枢神经系统肿瘤。
我们的目的是探讨半胱天冬酶8表达在脑膜瘤病理特征中的作用。
本研究共纳入50例脑膜瘤病例，包括广泛的组织病理学亚型。对组织芯片核心进行免疫组织化学检测，随后进行数字图像分析。
在21/50（42%）的病例中观察到半胱天冬酶8蛋白的过表达，而其余病例（29/50，58%）显示该分子水平为中度至低度。半胱天冬酶8的总体表达与所检查肿瘤的分级和有丝分裂指数在统计学上显著相关（分别为p = 0.001，p = 0.002）。
在脑膜瘤中观察到半胱天冬酶8的异常表达，且与它们的分化程度和有丝分裂活性相关。针对增强半胱天冬酶8表达以及诱导总体凋亡活性的靶向治疗策略，在合理治疗脑膜瘤患者亚组方面应该是一种非常有前景的方法。
