Histochemistry of oxidoreductases, enzymatic polymorphism and anaplasia of neuroectodermal tumors

Oxidoreductases were studied histochemically in 162 cases of neuroectodermal tumors. In order of decreasing activity in the cytoplasma these enzymes could be arranged as follows: NADH diaphorase, lactate dehydrogenase, NADPH diaphorase, glutamate dehydrogenase, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase, isocitrate dehydrogenase, succinate dehydrogenase, malate dehydrogenase. The weak activity of Krebs cycle enzymes and the relatively strong activity of other oxidoreductases, particularly of lactate dehydrogenase, permits to conclude that glycolysis prevails over oxidative processes in neuroectodermal tumor cells. But this should not be interpreted as a decrease of the Krebs cycle enzymes in astrocytoma and oligodendroglioma cells as compared with their parent cells because the latter themselves display a weak activity of these enzymes. A real decrease of Krebs cycle enzyme activity was established only for tumors, the parent cells of which are characterized by a strong (in choroid-papillomas) or moderate (in ependymomas) activity of these enzymes. Many neuroectodermal tumors, in particular those of astrocytic origin, demonstrate a certain correlation between the amount of cytoplasm and oxidoreductase activity. This results in enzymatic polymorphism of the tumor tissue. A certain similarity was established of the oxidoreductase activity in tumor cells and in reactive hypertophic astrocytes. This indicates that both tumor cells and reactive astrocytes may in certain conditions utilize similar mechanisms of increased metabolism. The oxidoreductase activity correlates not with the grade of anaplasia but with different directions of anaplasia reflected in different variants of neuroectodermal tumors. The concept "anaplasia" includes not only certain degrees of dedifferentiation of tumor cells but, as it has been shown histochemically, also an increase of metabolic processes in the tumor cell cytoplasma.