Expression of variant CD44 epitopes in human astrocytic brain tumors

Expression of CD44 and of specific splice-variants of CD44 has been causally related to metastatic behaviour in a variety of carcinomas and lymphomas. To elucidate whether, in principle, similar splice-variants could be involved in glioma cell invasion we examined the expression of CD44 and its splice-variants in a series of 38 primary human brain tumors (28 astrocytomas, WHO grade I-III and 10 glioblastomas, WHO grade IV) and in cell lines derived from 9 glioblastomas. All brain tumors examined showed strong immunoreactivity for an N-terminal epitope present on all CD44 isoforms known. Using a polyclonal antiserum raised against the complete sequence encoded by variant exons v3 to v10, CD44 splice-variants could be detected irrespective of the grade of malignancy in many of the tumor samples at a low level and often restricted to only a few clustered tumor cells. Thus, the N-terminal epitope probably indicates the presence of the smallest and most ubiquitous isoform CD44s. Interestingly, all glioblastomas expressed CD44 variants whereas expression in astrocytomas WHO grade I, II, and III could only be detected in about half of the tumor samples. Using reverse transcriptase-PCR we were able to detect different CD44 splice-variants in the glioblastoma cell lines and in cultured primary astrocytic cells. Glioblastoma cells analyzed by flow cytometry showed the expected binding capacity for hyaluronic acid which could be increased twofold after pretreatment with hyaluronidase. The results presented show that there is low expression of CD44 variants in human tumors of astrocytic origin. Expression of CD44 and its splice-variants could contribute to the migration capacity of neoplastic astrocytes, and may be considered as a target for new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches in the clinical management of brain tumors.