Molecular subclasses of high-grade glioma: prognosis, disease progression, and neurogenesis

Novel prognostic subclasses of high-grade astrocytoma are identified and discovered to resemble stages in neurogenesis. One tumor class displaying neuronal lineage markers shows longer survival, while two tumor classes enriched for neural stem cell markers display equally short survival. Poor prognosis subclasses exhibit either markers of proliferation or of angiogenesis and mesenchyme. Analysis of gene expression data is described in Phillips et al., Cancer Cell, 2006. Keywords: Disease state comparison 77 primary high-grade astrocytomas and 23 matched recurrences were profiled to identify changes in gene expression that relate to both survival and disease progression. Samples include WHO grade III and IV astrocytomas with a wide range of survival times.