1. Quantitative mRNA expression analysis of neurotrophin-receptor TrkC and oncogene c-MYC from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded primitive neuroectodermal tumor samples
- Author
-
Doris Lang, Ghazaleh Tabatabai, André Von Büren, Johannes A. Hainfellner, Michael A. Grotzer, Tarek Shalaby, Slavc I, and Franzisca Kunz
- Subjects
Adult ,Pathology ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Tissue Fixation ,Adolescent ,Gene Expression ,Biology ,Tropomyosin receptor kinase C ,Proto-Oncogene Mas ,Pathology and Forensic Medicine ,Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-myc ,Formaldehyde ,medicine ,Humans ,Neuroectodermal Tumors, Primitive ,Receptor, trkC ,RNA, Messenger ,Child ,Medulloblastoma ,Messenger RNA ,Paraffin Embedding ,Oncogene ,Brain Neoplasms ,Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction ,Gene Expression Profiling ,RNA ,Infant ,General Medicine ,medicine.disease ,Primitive neuroectodermal tumor ,Child, Preschool ,biology.protein ,Cancer research ,Neurology (clinical) ,RNA extraction ,Neurotrophin - Abstract
Most recent studies analyzing candidate biological prognostic factors (including neurotrophin receptor TrkC and proto-oncogene c-MYC) in childhood primitive neuroectodermal brain tumors (PNET) are limited by small patient numbers due to dependence on fresh-frozen tumor material. In contrast, large archives of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded PNET samples exist from homogeneously treated patients. The ability of real-time RT-PCR to assay very small mRNA fragments makes this assay amenable to studies where the RNA is moderately or even highly degraded. We have optimized RNA isolation from archive PNET samples and found that TrkC and c-MYC mRNA measurements significantly correlated with those obtained from matching fresh-frozen tissues. Exploitation of already existing archives of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded PNET samples may accelerate the building of better stratification systems for PNET patients.
- Published
- 2006