F. Hernández y Juan F. Madrid. Universidad de Murcia: Departamento de Biología Celular e Histología
Doi
Abstract
Since the discovery of the TCF/LEF family
of transcription factors, their functions have been under
intensive investigation in the area of cancer biology. The
work presented in this paper focused on the changes in
TCF-1 and LEF-1 expression levels in a set of astrocytic
brain tumors.
Protein expression was detected using
immunohistochemistry and then evaluated by Ellipse
software (ViDiTo, Slovakia). Statistical evaluations were
performed with the SPSS statistical package, version
14.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA).
Strong TCF-1 and LEF-1 expression was observed
in 51.6% and 71% of glioblastoma samples. Statistical
analysis confirmed significant differences in protein
expression levels associated to 3 important values, weak
expression of TCF-1, weak expression of LEF-1 and
strong expression of LEF-1. Analysis of variances
performed on the total sample also indicated significant
differences in the values of TCF-1 weak (F=2.804;
p=0.045), LEF-1 weak (F=4.255; p=0.008) and LEF-1
strong (F=5.498; p=0.002) with regard to malignancy
grade. Thus, glioblastomas were characterized by –in
relative terms- the lowest values for weak expression of
TCF-1 and LEF-1, combined with the highest values of
LEF-1 strong expression. The F-ratios for two variables
(LEF-1 strong and LEF-1 weak) indicated that
differences between astrocytomas (II, III) and
glioblastomas were statistically significant (p<0.02).
Discriminant function analysis further showed that
strong LEF-1 expression alone could discriminate
between astrocytomas (II, III) and glioblastomas.
Elevated TCF-1 and LEF-1 expression is
characteristic of malignant gliomas. LEF-1, in particular,
may serve as a potential marker for malignant transformation