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International audience; This study assessed the prognostic value of several markers involved in gliomagenesis, and compared it with that of other clinical and imaging markers already used. Four-hundred and sixteen adult patients with newly diagnosed glioma were included over a 3-year period and tumour suppressor genes, oncogenes, MGMT and hTERT expressions, losses of heterozygosity, as well as relevant clinical and imaging information were recorded. This prospective study was based on all adult gliomas. Analyses were performed on patient groups selected according to World Health Organization histoprognostic criteria and on the entire cohort. The endpoint was overall survival, estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method. Univariate analysis was followed by multivariate analysis according to a Cox model. p14(ARF), p16(INK4A) and PTEN expressions, and 10p 10q23, 10q26 and 13q LOH for the entire cohort, hTERT expression for high-grade tumours, EGFR for glioblastomas, 10q26 LOH for grade III tumours and anaplastic oligodendrogliomas were found to be correlated with overall survival on univariate analysis and age and grade on multivariate analysis only. This study confirms the prognostic value of several markers. However, the scattering of the values explained by tumour heterogeneity prevents their use in individual decision-making.

Glial tumours are a devastating, poorly understood condition carrying a gloomy prognosis for which clinicians sorely lack reliable predictive parameters facilitating a sound treatment strategy. Tp73, a p53 family member, expresses two main classes of isoforms--transactivatory activity (TA)p73 and DeltaTAp73--exhibiting tumour suppressor gene and oncogene properties, respectively. The authors examined their expression status in high- and low-grade adult gliomas. Isoform-specific real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction was used for the analysis of Tp73 isoform transcript expression in a series of 51 adult patients harbouring glial tumours, in order to compare tumour grades with each other, and with non-tumoural samples obtained from epileptic patients as well. Our data demonstrate increase of TAp73 and DeltaTAp73 transcript levels at onset and early stage of the disease. We also show that DeltaEx2-3 isoform expression in low-grade tumours anticipates clinical and imaging progression to higher grades, and correlates to the patients' survival. Expression levels of P1 promoter generated Tp73 isoforms--and particularly DeltaEx2-3--indeed allow for prediction of the clinical progression of low-grade gliomas in adults. Our data are the first such molecular biology report regarding low-grade tumours and as such should be of help for sound decision-making.