Correlation between ADAM17 protein expression level and prognosis of neuroglioma

Tumor metastasis is a complicated process involving multiple genes and signals. A disintegrin and metalloproteinase domain 17 (ADAM17) plays an important role in metastasis of glioma. This study thus investigated the expression level of ADAM17 in glioma tissues at different pathological grades, in order to investigate the correlation between ADAM17 expression and pathological feature and prognosis of glioma. Both glioma tissues and normal brain tissues were collected to determine both mRNA and protein levels of ADAM17 by immunohistochemistry (IHC) and PCR. Spearman method was used to analyze the correlation between ADAM17 and malignancy of glioma. Kaplan-Meier method was employed for survival analysis. Cox ratio risk model was adapted for multi-factor survival analysis. ADAM17 protein level was significantly higher in glioma tissues compared to normal brain tissues (χ2 = 10.5448, P = 0.001). Positive rates of ADAM in advanced grade glioma was 60.92%, which was significantly higher than that in lower grade tumor (25.5%, χ2 = 8.3576, P = 0.003). mRNA level of ADAM17 was positively correlated with pathological grades (r = 0.712, P<0.05). K-M curve showed significantly shorter survival time of patients with ADAM17 high expression (P<0.05). Cox analysis revealed ADAM17 as one independent risk factor for glioma prognosis. ADAM17 is up-regulated in neuroglioma tissues. The assay of ADAM17 expression can benefit the evaluation of biological behavior of glioma, and may helping the prognostic prediction.