The Journal of pathology
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The Journal of pathology · May 2006
New evidence for the origin of intracranial germ cell tumours from primordial germ cells: expression of pluripotency and cell differentiation markers.
Primary intracranial germ cell tumours are rare neoplasms that occur in children and adolescents. This study examined both the biology and the origin of these tumours, as it has been hypothesized that they originate from a totipotent primordial germ cell. We applied recent knowledge from gonadal germ cell tumours and analysed expression of a wide panel of stem cell-related proteins (C-KIT, OCT-3/4 (POU5F1), AP-2gamma (TFAP2C), and NANOG) and developmentally regulated germ cell-specific proteins (including MAGE-A4, NY-ESO-1, and TSPY). ⋯ A notable difference was the sex-specific expression of TSPY, a gene previously implicated in the origin of gonadoblastoma. TSPY was only detected in germ cell tumours in the central nervous system (CNS) from males, suggesting that it is not required for the initiation of malignant germ cell transformation. The expression of genes associated with embryonic stem cell pluripotency in CNS germ cell tumours strongly suggests that these tumours are derived from cells that retain, at least partially, an embryonic stem cell-like phenotype, which is a hallmark of primordial germ cells.