Li H, Liu J, Hofmann M, Hamou M F, de Tribolet N
Division of Molecular Biology, Shenyang Medical College, People's Republic of China.
Br J Cancer. 1995 Jul;72(1):160-3. doi: 10.1038/bjc.1995.294.
Splicing variants of CD44 (CD44v) are increasingly recognised as metastasis-promoting factors in rodent and some human cancers. However, the frequency for CD44v expression in human cancers and their metastases and the status of CD44v expression in low or non-metastatic tumours is still uncertain. To address this issue, we investigated CD44 expression patterns in brain metastases (BMTs) spread from more than ten organs and five types of primary brain tumours (PBTs) by Northern blot, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and immunocytochemical analysis. The results demonstrated that all of the 56 PBTs examined express standard form of CD44 (CD44s) but none of them express CD44v. In contrast, 22 of 26 BMTs studied were found with CD44v expression. Our data thus present direct evidence of a general distribution of CD44 in BMTs but suggest that such expression is an extremely rare event in PBTs. Therefore, the presence or absence of CD44v expression may be related to high or low metastatic potential of human malignancies.
CD44剪接变体（CD44v）在啮齿动物和一些人类癌症中越来越被认为是促进转移的因子。然而，CD44v在人类癌症及其转移灶中的表达频率以及在低转移或无转移肿瘤中CD44v的表达状况仍不确定。为了解决这个问题，我们通过Northern印迹、逆转录聚合酶链反应（RT-PCR）和免疫细胞化学分析，研究了来自十多个器官的脑转移瘤（BMT）以及五种原发性脑肿瘤（PBT）中CD44的表达模式。结果表明，所检测的56例PBT均表达标准形式的CD44（CD44s），但均不表达CD44v。相反，在研究的26例BMT中，有22例发现有CD44v表达。因此，我们的数据直接证明了CD44在BMT中普遍存在，但表明这种表达在PBT中极为罕见。因此，CD44v表达的有无可能与人恶性肿瘤的高或低转移潜能有关。
