Abstract 465: CD44 as a potential therapeutic target and prognosis marker for glioblastoma

Abstract

Abstract Glioblastoma (GBM) is a common and very aggressive primary brain tumor with no cure. The current diagnosis relying on magnetic resonance imagining, computed tomography, and biopsy is a very expensive and aggressive process. More effective therapeutic strategies such as target therapies and simplified early diagnosis tools are urgently needed for GBM management and prognosis. As recent reports suggest that GBM expresses CD44, a type-I transmembrane glycoprotein, is a marker of cancer stem cell and therapy resistance, with a goal of identifying a therapeutic target and a prognosis maker for GBM, we analyzed several data sets previously detected by microarrays using an online R2 Genomics analysis and visualization platform (http://r2.amc.nl). Through examining of the expression levels of CD44 in the tissues of normal cerebellum (without brain tumor) and in GBM tissues, we find that the expression level of CD44 in GBM is higher than that in non-brain tumor tissues. Comparing the expression levels of CD44 in Primary and recurrent GBMs, GBM cell lines, neuron stem cell lines, and normal cortex tissues, we observe that the expression levels of CD44 in recurrent GBMs are higher than primary GBMs; the CD44 levels in GBM cell lines are similar to neuron stem cell lines which are significantly higher than that in the normal cortex tissues. We further evaluated the correlation of CD44 levels with patients’ overall survival in 4 available complete data sets in the R2 database, including 2 from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. We show that an elevated level of CD44 in GBM is associated with a short overall survival time although variations exist from cohort to cohort. In addition, we studied the effect of p53 status on CD44 expression, we reveal that CD44 level is higher in the GBMs carrying p53 mutation compared to those with wild-type p53. Taken together, these results indicate that CD44 could be a potential therapeutic target of GBM and the expression level of CD44 in the GBM may be an indicator of poor outcome for patients with GBM. Citation Format: Fengfei Wang, Xin Shen, Jessica Pruszynski, Jason Huang, Batool Kirmani, Erxi Wu, Ekokobe Fonkem. CD44 as a potential therapeutic target and prognosis marker for glioblastoma. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 465.