Keratoepithelin in neuroblastoma: molecular mechanisms and functional studies

Neuroblastoma (NB) is the most common solid tumor of infancy. Approximately 40% of the affected children die in spite of aggressive multimodal therapy. The N-myc oncogene is probably causally involved in the progression of neuroblastomas but other factors may equally contribute. We found that Activin-A expression in neuroblastoma is a favourable prognostic marker (1). Activin-A transfected NB cell lines lead to poorly vascularized tumors in orthotropic mouse model despite high N-myc levels. A particular mechanism by which activin-A may act in human neuroblastomas is the up regulation of Keratoepithelin. Using Af…