Nestin expression in different tumours and its relevance to malignant grade

Abstract

Background:Nestin, an intermediate filament (IF) protein, is expressed in proliferating progenitor cells of developmental and regenerating tissues, and is identified as a neuroepithelial precursor cell marker. Recently, nestin was detected in some neoplasms such as glioma, ependymoma, melanoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST), and testicular stromal tumour. Moreover, the expression intensity of nestin exhibited significant correlation with the malignant grade of glioma.Aims:To detect the expression of nestin in different tumours and to analyse the relationship between the expression of nestin and the malignant grade of the tumours.Methods:Formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded surgical samples of neoplastic tissues were obtained from the Department of Pathology of Sun Yat-sen University. Histological analysis and immunohistochemical staining for nestin were performed. Histoscores were analysed by semi-quantitative evaluation.Results:Nestin was expressed predominantly in the cytoplasm of angiosarcoma, pancreatic adenocarcinoma and GIST samples, and some tumour cells expressed in the nucleus. There was a statistically significant difference between the histoscore of nestin in high malignant GIST (2.2366 (0.6920)) and that in low malignant GIST (1.3783 (0.4268)) (p = 0.003); and also between that in high malignant angiosarcoma (1.9188 (0.2069)) and that in low malignant angiosarcoma (0.6474 (0.3273)) (p = 0.000). Cavernous angioma did not express nestin. The histoscore of nestin in high malignant pancreatic adenocarcinoma (7/14) was 1.1767 (0.4676), and that in low malignant pancreatic adenocarcinoma (3/8) was 0.6577 (0.0056) (no significant difference, p = 0.112).Conclusions:Results suggest that the expression of nestin may play an important role in the development of some neoplasms such as GIST and angiosarcoma.

Induced in vitro differentiation of neural-like cells from human exfoliated deciduous teeth-derived stem cells

“…The high expression of Nestin and -Tub III in SHED cells before induction was in concordance with previous reports (Arthur et al, 2008) which may be related to the neural crest-cell origin of the dental pulp (Bronner-Fraser, 1994;Chai et al, 2000). The expression of nestin is also reported in other tissues such as the pancreas, testes, and bone marrow (Delacour et al, 2004;Yang et al, 2008), which are believed to contain multi-lineage progenitor cells with early embryonic origin (Wiese et al, 2004). However, flow cytometric analysis revealed a shift in their expression, which suggested a prominent intensity for two markers postneural induction and western blot analysis showed an increase in their expression after induction.…”

Expression profiling of GIST: CD133 is associated with KIT exon 11 mutations, gastric location and poor prognosis

“…CD133, CD34 and nestin. 43 These observations suggest the presence of cancer stem cells in GIST, and if proven may have important clinical implications. Cancer stem cells usually represent a minor proportion of solid tumors, yet these cells have a crucial role in tumor initiation, recurrence, and resistance to chemotherapy/radiotherapy.…”

Clinical significance of nestin and its association with survival in neuroendocrine lung tumours

“…This protein was also recognized in other types of solid neoplasms e.g. osteosarcoma [7], germinoma [8] or those originating from epithelial tissues, like pancreatic adenocarcinoma [9]. Additionally, recent research proved that nestin expression is associated with clinical course of malignant disease.…”