MECHANISMS OF GLIOMA INVASION - ROLE OF MATRIX-METALLOPROTEINASES

One of the most lethal properties of high grade gliomas is their abili ty to invade the surrounding normal brain tissue, as infiltrated cells often escape surgical resection and inevitably lead to tumour recurre nce, The consequent poor prognosis and survival rate underscore the ne ed to further understand and target the cellular mechanisms that under ly tumour invasiveness, Proteases which degrade the surrounding stroma l cells and extracellular matrix proteins have been demonstrated to be critical effecters of invasion for tumours of both central and periph eral origin, Within the nervous system, the role of metalloproteinases as well as other classes of proteases in mediating the invasive pheno type of high grade gliomas has been an intense area of research. We pr esent in this article a review of this literature and address the poss ibility that these proteases and the biochemical pathways that regulat e their expression, such as protein kinase C, may represent potential targets in the therapy of high grade gliomas.