Overexpression of STMN1 is associated with the prognosis of meningioma patients

- There is a part of the pathological type of the meningioma has a malignant tendency and patients have poor prognosis.
- STMN1 plays an important role in the maintenance, metastasis, invasion, and differentiation of malignant tumor cells.
- High expression of STMN1, along with high Ki-67 scores and WHO grades, act as independent prognostic factors for survival times.
- STMN1 represents a potential biomarker for predicting meningioma progression.

There is a small part of the pathological type of the meningioma has a malignant tendency and patients have the poor prognosis. Looking for effective biomarkers to predict the degree of malignancy of the tumors, will help us to better manage the patient and guide the treatment. The present study aims at investigating the prognostic value of the expression of Stathmin in a series of meningiomas of different grade. We integrated eight published microarray datasets of meningiomas to screen grade biomarkers in meningiomas patients using the WebArrayDB platform. We focused on Stathmin, Using formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tumor samples, we corroborated the relationship between Stathmin and patient outcomes using qRT-PCR for gene expression. We also found expression of Stathmin that atypical/anaplastic meningiomas have higher expression than benign meningiomas (p < 0.01). No correlation between Stathmin expression and age, gender and tumor extent of resection was found (p > 0.05). Moreover, increased Stathmin expression was correlated to higher meningioma grade and shorter disease-free survival (DFS) of meningioma patients with Simpson I resection. Stathmin might be promising targets to improve the cure rates in meningiomas.