Brain Cancer Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Brain Cancer, including details on symptoms, benign and malignant tumors, gliomas, treatment.

Knockdown of annexin 2 decreases migration of human glioma cells in vitro.

Tatenhorst L, Rescher U, Gerke V, Paulus W

Institute of Neuropathology, University Hospital Muenster, Muenster, Germany.

Diffuse invasion of brain tissue is a major reason for the poor prognosis of patients with glioblastoma. Annexin 2, a member of the large annexin family of Ca2+ and membrane-binding proteins, is expressed at high protein levels in human gliomas and has been proposed as a marker of glioma malignancy, while its functional role in these tumours is unknown so far. The ability of annexin 2 to interact with the actin cytoskeleton, as well as its potential to bind invasion-associated proteases, suggests that it could participate in invasion-associated processes in human gliomas. Therefore, we analysed here functional consequences of RNA interference-mediated silencing of annexin 2 in U87MG and U373MG human glioma cell lines. While no impact of annexin 2 downregulation on proliferation and adhesion was observed, our analyses revealed that migration of U87MG and U373MG cells was significantly inhibited following annexin 2 depletion. This effect was not related to a compensatory increase of the related annexins 1 or 6. Our findings identify annexin 2 as a potential candidate involved in glioma invasion and support the potential of RNA interference as powerful tool in the decryption of glioma invasion mechanisms.

Published 27 April 2006 in Neuropathol Appl Neurobiol, 32(3): 271-7.
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