Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 19, 2026
Isolation, Enrichment, and Maintenance of Medulloblastoma Stem Cells
Published on: September 1, 2010
CD57(high) neuroblastoma cells have aggressive attributes ex situ and an undifferentiated phenotype in patients
Anne-Marie Schlitter1, Carmen Dorneburg, Thomas F E Barth
1Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, University Medical Center Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
Background:
Neuroblastoma is thought to originate from neural crest-derived cells. CD57 defines migratory neural crest cells in normal development and is expressed in neuroblastoma.
Methodology And Principal Findings:
We investigated the role of CD57 expression in neuroblastoma cells ex situ and in situ. Compared to CD57(low) U-NB1 neuroblastoma cells, CD57(high) cells developed tumors with decreased latency after orthotopic transplantation into adrenal glands of mice. In addition, CD57(high) U-NB1 and SK-N-BE(2)-C neuroblastoma cells were also more clonogenic, induced more spheres and were less lineage-restricted. CD57(high) cells attached better to endothelial cells and showed enhanced invasiveness. While invasion of U-NB1 cells was inhibited by blocking antibodies against CD57, neither invasion of SK-N-BE(2)-C cells nor adhesion of U-NB1 and SK-N-BE(2)-C cells was attenuated. After tail vein injection only CD57(high) cells generated liver metastases, while overall metastatic rate was not increased as compared to CD57(low) cells. In stroma-poor neuroblastoma of patients CD57(high) cells were associated with undifferentiated tumor cells across all stages and tended to be more frequent after chemotherapy.
Conclusion:
Strong expression of CD57 correlates with aggressive attributes of U-NB1 and SK-N-BE(2)-C neuroblastoma cells and is linked with undifferentiated neuroblastoma cells in patients.
