Increased Phosphorylation of Vimentin in Noninfiltrative Meningiomas

International audienceBACKGROUND: Tissue invasion or tissue infiltration are clinical behaviors of a poor-prognosis subset of meningiomas. We carried out proteomic analyses of tissue extracts to discover new markers to accurately distinguish between infiltrative and noninfiltrative meningiomas. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Protein lysates of 64 different tissue samples (including two brain-invasive and 32 infiltrative tumors) were submitted to SELDI-TOF mass spectrometric analysis. Mass profiles were used to build up both unsupervised and supervised hierarchical clustering. One marker was found at high levels in noninvasive and noninfiltrative tumors and appeared to be a discriminative marker for clustering infiltrative and/or invasive meningiomas versus noninvasive meningiomas in two distinct subsets. Sensitivity and specificity were 86.7% and 100%, respectively. This marker was purified and identified as a multiphosphorylated form of vimentin, a cytoskeletal protein expressed in meningiomas. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Specific forms of vimentin can be surrogate molecular indicators of the invasive/infiltrative phenotype in tumors

THz imaging of histo-pathological samples

ABSTRACT We investigate the potential of THz imaging for the examination of histo-pathological samples. Data obtained on a pig larynx and on a human liver containing cancerous tissue are presented. Different types of tissue are clearly resolved due to their distinct spectral absorption characteristics or due to a density dependent THz transmission