PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Abou-Ghazal, Mohamed
AU  - Yang, David S.
AU  - Qiao, Wei
AU  - Reina-Ortiz, Chantal
AU  - Wei, Jun
AU  - Kong, Ling-Yuan
AU  - Fuller, Gregory N.
AU  - Hiraoka, Nobuyoshi
AU  - Priebe, Waldemar
AU  - Sawaya, Raymond
AU  - Heimberger, Amy B.
TI  - The Incidence, Correlation with Tumor-Infiltrating Inflammation, and Prognosis of Phosphorylated STAT3 Expression in Human Gliomas
AID  - 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-08-1329
DP  - 2008 Dec 15
TA  - Clinical Cancer Research
PG  - 8228--8235
VI  - 14
IP  - 24
4099  - http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/14/24/8228.short
4100  - http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/14/24/8228.full
SO  - Clin Cancer Res2008 Dec 15; 14
AB  - Purpose: The signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) is frequently overexpressed in most cancers, propagates tumorigenesis, and is a key regulator of immune suppression in cancer patients. We sought to determine the incidence of phosphorylated STAT3 (p-STAT3) expression in malignant gliomas of different pathologic types, whether p-STAT3 expression is a negative prognostic factor, and whether p-STAT3 expression influences the inflammatory response within gliomas. Methods: Using immunohistochemical analysis, we measured the incidence of p-STAT3 expression in 129 patients with gliomas of various pathologic types in a glioma tissue microarray. We categorized our results according to the total number of p-STAT3–expressing cells within the gliomas and correlated this number with the number of infiltrating T cells and T regulatory cells. We then evaluated the association between p-STAT3 expression and median survival time using univariate and multivariate analyses. Results: We did not detect p-STAT3 expression in normal brain tissues or low-grade astrocytomas. We observed significant differences in the incidence of p-STAT3 expression between the different grades of astrocytomas and different pathologic glioma types. p-STAT3 expression was associated with the population of tumor-infiltrating immune cells but not with that of T regulatory cells. On univariate analysis, we found that p-STAT3 expression within anaplastic astrocytomas was a negative prognostic factor. Conclusions: p-STAT3 expression is common within gliomas of both the astrocytic and oligodendroglial lineages and portends poor survival in patients with anaplastic astrocytomas. p-STAT3 expression differs significantly between gliomas of different pathologic types and grades and correlated with the degree of immune infiltration.