Cytosolic Hsp70 as a biomarker to predict clinical outcome in patients with glioblastoma.

• Main Authors: Friederike Lämmer, Claire Delbridge, Silvia Würstle, Frauke Neff, Bernhard Meyer, Jürgen Schlegel, Kerstin A Kessel, Thomas E Schmid, Daniela Schilling, Stephanie E Combs
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2019-01-01
• Series: PLoS ONE
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221502
• ISSN: 1932-6203

<h4>Introduction</h4>The major stress-inducible heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) is induced after different stress stimuli. In tumors, elevated intracellular Hsp70 levels were associated on the one hand with radio- and chemotherapy resistance and on the other hand with a favorable outcome for patients. This study was undertaken to investigate cytosolic Hsp70 (cHsp70) as a potential biomarker for progression free (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients with primary glioblastomas (GBM).<h4>Methods</h4>The cHsp70 expression in tumor tissue of 60 patients diagnosed with primary GBM was analyzed by immunohistochemistry. The cHsp70 expression was correlated to the PFS and OS of the patients.<h4>Results</h4>A high cHsp70 expression was associated with a prolonged PFS (hazard ratio = 0.374, p = 0.001) and OS (hazard ratio = 0.416, p = 0.014) in GBM patients treated according to the standard Stupp protocol with surgery, radiotherapy and temozolomide.<h4>Conclusions</h4>These data suggest that the intracellular Hsp70 expression might serve as a prognostic marker in patients with primary GBM.