Expression of Tenascin in Human Cervical Cancer—Association of Tenascin Expression with Clinicopathological Parameters

Tenascins: regulation and putative functions during pathological stress

“…Similar findings were made for uterine and ovarian cancers where intense stromal tenascin-C staining was found in malignant tumours [133,134]. However, in one report it was noted that despite a high percentage of strong tenascin-C staining in invasive cancers, the few tenascin-C-negative invasive cases appeared to have an even worse prognosis [135]. A similar tendency was noticed in prostate cancer, where a peak of tenascin-C expression was identified in moderately differentiated tumours, but sparse staining was observed in high-grade tumours [136,137].…”

Tenascin-C Expression and Its Prognostic Significance in Colorectal Cancer

“…Thus, tenascin-C might support malignant transformation, and already at an early stage, play a detrimental role in tumorigenesis, a role which appears to persist throughout tumor progression [5, 6]. However, in contrast to these cancer-promoting functions, it has been proposed that tenascin-C may also act to prevent tumor invasion and metastasis and consequently confer a better clinical outcome [25, 28, 39, 40]. Tenascin-C is thought to exert a paracrine effect, by which tumor cells force cells in the surrounding stroma to produce a dense desmoplastic fibrous stroma.…”

“…It has been proposed that the differences in tenascin-C expression and its prognostic significance seen in and between different cancer forms could be related to the antibodies used and the variations in isoforms of tenascin-C [25, 37]. Several isoforms of tenascin-C glycoproteins exist, with tissue-specific expression and probably also different biological functions [37, 38].…”

“…In many cancer forms, such as breast [14, 15], lung [16], brain [17], urological [18, 19], malignant melanoma [20], pheochromocytoma [21], cholangiocarcinoma [22] and adipocytic tumors [23], a high tenascin-C expression has been correlated with a poor patient survival [5, 6]. While this correlation applies to some cancers, there are also reports where tenascin-C expression correlates with a lower stage of disease and a better patient outcome [5, 6, 24, 25]. This also holds true for colorectal cancer, where an early report indicated that very strong tenascin-C expression in nonmetastatic primary colon cancer tissue may be associated with a good prognosis [11], and in another report, patients with more tenascin-C expression had better long-term survival than patients with no or weak tenascin-C expression [26].…”

Tenascin-C: Form versus function

“…There is no correlation between tenascin-C expression and prognosis or disease stage in stomach adenocarcinoma; 110 There are also cases where tenascin-C expression is absent in poor prognosis tumors, such as in cases of cervical carcinoma. 111 Other studies found no associations between tenascin-C expression pattern and a number of clinical features such as nodal metastasis, tumor necrosis or blood vessel invasion in 32 invasive breast carcinomas. 112 Interestingly, one study found that in colorectal carcinoma (CRC) low expression of tenascin-C is associated with lymph node metastasis, perhaps indicating that in some cancers tenascin-C is capable of enforcing some anti-metastasis mechanisms.…”