The proportion of the DKK-1-positive cases was 91.5% for glioma (43 of 47). Representative data are shown in Figure 2. The difference between glioma patients and healthy individuals was significant (p < 0.05). Kendall's tau-c association analysis also revealed the increased DKK-1 protein GDC-0994 concentration expression in tumor tissues of higher pathologic classification (rτ = 0.3178, P < 0.01) (Table 3). The relatively high false-positive rate here (2 of 11) may be eliminated by testing more normal volunteers or measuring more tumor markers to improve overall sensitivity for detection of glioblastoma. We subsequently

confirmed by means of Adriamycin clinical trial semiquantitative RT-PCR experiment overexpression of DKK-1 mRNA in 26 tumor tissues frozen in liquid nitrogen, but its transcript was hardly detectable in any other normal tissues (P < 0.05) (Figure 3). These observations demonstrated that DKK-1 was a novel molecule that can be applicable to detect presence of glioma at an early stage and thus help us develop novel treatments based on the biological characteristics of tumor cells. Table 2 DKK1-1 expression in glioma and corresponding www.selleckchem.com/products/pu-h71.html normal brain tissues   DKK-1expression   Strong (++) Weak (+) Negative (-) Total Glioblastoma tissue 28 15 4 47 Normal brain tissue 0 2 9 11 Figure 2 Different

hDKK-1 expression levels in tumor and healthy brain tissues analyzed by immunohistochemistry. Table 3 Correlation between DKK-1 expression in different tumor stages and pathologic tumor classification Stage DKK-1expression   Strong (++) Weak (+) Negative (-) Total I 1 2 2 5 II 10 9 1 20 III 13 3 1 17 IV 4 1 0 5 Figure 3 Expression of DKK-1 was detected in selected tissue samples by RT-PCR. Serologic concentrations and cerebral fluid levels of DKK-1 in patients with tumors Because DKK-1 encodes a secreted protein, we investigated the DKK-1 protein secreted into sera of patients with glioma or neuronal benign tumor

and healthy individuals. ELISA experiments detected DKK-1 protein in serologic samples from 18 patients with spongbioblastoma or low-grade glioma, 20 benign tumor patients in their neuronal system, and 8 healthy controls. Unexpectedly, differences were not significant between acetylcholine glioma patients and healthy individuals/neuronal benign tumor patients, and between neuronal benign tumor patients and healthy controls (Figure 4A), suggesting that more clinical specimens should be examined. Although previous results support the high specificity and the great potentiality of serum DKK-1 as a biomarker for detection of myeloma/lung and esophageal carcinomas at an early stage and for monitoring of the relapse of the disease [17, 19]. in patients with multiple glioma, serum concentrations of DKK-1 protein were close to the limit of detection by ELISA analysis due to the blood-brain barrier.