ErbB2/HER2 status is important in the medical management of patients with various human malignancies, whereas its clinical relevance in human meningiomas is ambiguous.
By contrast, the overexpression of HER‑2 group resulted in meningioma cell invasion, migration and proliferation being significantly enhanced, cell cycle was promoted at the G1/S‑phase and early apoptosis was decreased.
Thus, diploid tumours displayed higher levels of expression of the CD55 complement regulatory protein, tumours carrying isolated monosomy 22/del(22q) showed greater levels of bcl2 and PDGFRβ and meningiomas carrying complex karyotypes displayed a greater proliferation index and decreased expression of the CD13 ectoenzyme, the CD9 and CD81 tetraspanins, and the Her2/neu growth factor receptor.
These preliminary results implicate a potential role for ErbB-2 in the benign tumourigenesis of meningioma consistent with the theoretical hierarchical interactions of homodimers of ErbB-2 that may be associated with low signal transduction.
The results of in situ hybridization using a 32P-labeled neu/erbB-2 RNA probe performed on four WHO grade I and II astrocytomas, seven WHO grade IV glioblastomas, one WHO grade II oligoastrocytoma, one WHO grade III anaplastic astrocytoma, and three WHO grade I meningiomas were consistent with these immunomorphological data, and Northern blot analysis also indicated an overexpression of neu/c-erbB-2 mRNA in gliomas of different grades of malignancy and in meningiomas.
These data argue against an overexpression of c-erbB-2 in meningiomas, but rather indicate a cell-type-specific constitutive expression of the c-erbB-2 gene product in meningiomas and their putative progenitor cells.