Immunocytochemical evidence of molecular photoreceptor markers in cerebellar medulloblastomas

Abstract

With the use of antisera against bovine retinal S-antigen and bovine opsin the authors demonstrate that in cerebellar medulloblastomas certain tumor cells display immunocytochemical properties characteristic of retinal photoreceptors and pinealocytes. S-antigen-like and opsin-like immunoreactions occur in nine of 28 medulloblastomas investigated. All tumors displaying S-antigen-like immunoreactive neoplastic cells also contain opsin-like immunoreactive cells; however, the opsin-like immunoreactive cells were less frequent than the S-antigen-like immunoreactive cells throughout all positive cases. The immunoreactive cells displayed several long processes. Generally, both S-antigen and opsin-like immunoreactive cells considerably vary in number among individual tumors. The results indicate that certain neoplastic cells of medulloblastoma are capable of expression of photoreceptor-specific proteins and, thus, may be closely related to tumor cells of retinoblastoma and pineocytomas previously shown to bind antisera against retinal S-antigen and opsin. No S-antigen and opsin-like immunoreaction was found in malignant teratomas and germinomas of the pineal gland, oat cell tumors, astrocytomas, ependymomas, oligodendrogliomas, glioblastomas, gangliogliomas, gangliocytoma, ganglioneuroblastomas, neuroblastomas, and esthesioneuroblastoma.

Trilateral retinoblastoma variant indicative of the relevance of the retinoblastoma tumor-suppressor pathway to medulloblastomas in humans

“…In the present case, the pineal gland was normal. Although the findings in our case tend to discount a relationship between the ectopic tumor and the retina, it is interesting that a subset of medulloblastomas are known to exhibit a retinoblastoma-like phenotype 4,5,18,19 that apparently does not require rb mutations. 15 In the present case, we found no evidence for photoreceptor differentiation, in either our morphological study or our immunohistochemical analysis for photoreceptor proteins.…”

Integrated Genomics Identifies Five Medulloblastoma Subtypes with Distinct Genetic Profiles, Pathway Signatures and Clinicopathological Features

“…Korf and colleagues already noticed in 1987 that a subset of medulloblastomas express S-antigen and opsin , both markers that are in a non-neoplastic state exclusively expressed in retinal photoreceptors and a class of pinealocytes which are derivatives of pineal photoreceptor cells [51], [52]. Several other studies confirmed these results [53]–[57], but the most recent paper on this topic is from 1995.…”

Neoplastic and immune single cell transcriptomics define subgroup-specific intra-tumoral heterogeneity of childhood medulloblastoma

“…The predominant GP3 differentiated subpopulation GP3-C1 (38% of all GP3 neoplastic cells) is characterized by genes related to RNA processing and axo-dendritic transport (Table 1, S2, S3). The less abundant GP3-C2 (15% of neoplastic cells) was distinguished by genes and TFs related to photoreceptor development (NRL, IMPG2) (Table 1, S2-4), a phenotype that has been identified and studied in GP3 but not previously recognized as a discrete subpopulation of cells (Cho et al, 2011;Garancher et al, 2018;Kool et al, 2008;Korf et al, 1987). We examined this photoreceptor like subpopulation using immunohistochemistry (IHC) to chart both morphological and spatial characteristics.…”