Differentiation and prognosis of neuroblastoma in correlation to the expression of CD44s.

Cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix interactions mediated by cell adhesion molecules (for example CD44) play an important role in the cascade of metastasis and the progression of human malignant tumours. The most important aim of this review was, on the basis of our results and the literature, to show the correlation between the expression of CD44s and differentiation and prognosis of neuroblastoma. Surprisingly and in contrast to most other malignant tumours, neuroblastomas exhibited an inverse correlation between CD44s expression and tumour progression. It can be stated that CD44s is a prognostic marker in neuroblastoma which correlates significantly with the grade of tumour cell differentiation, but not with clinical stage. Moreover, there exists a statistically significant correlation between MYCN oncogene amplification and the lack of CD44s expression.