Ganglioside Content and Composition in Human Gliomas

Summary

Many alterations of ganglioside content and distribution have been described in human and experimental tumours. Our previous data showed the presence of lipid alterations in meningiomas, in particular an increased monosialilganglioside content. Therefore we analyzed the distribution and content of gangliosides in various gliomas. The data show that ganglioside content is inversely porportional to tissue malignancy and that the ganglioside pattern can be described as lacking of polisialilgangliosides with increased GD₃ content. The amount of GD₃ (as percent of total gangliosides sialic acid) increases from 15% in astrocytomas grade I to 60% in grade IV. The GD₃ increase seems to be almost specific of glioma. Because anti-GD₃ antibodies could be used to localize immunohistochemically the ganglioside and to help the tumour grading, we used a purified preparation of GD₃ to produce monoclonal antibodies in balb/c mice. But because some clones did produce anti-GD₃ antibodies the low yield requires further experiments to obtain an antibody useful for this purpose.