Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Review Article | OPEN ACCESS

Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma Prognostic Marker: A Review of Osteopontin and Soluble Mesothelin Peptides

Franca N Alaribe, Staffania Maniero, Cecilia Pancaldi

Department of Morphology and Embryology, Section of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, University of Ferrara, Via Fossato di Mortara 64/b, 44100 Ferrara, Italy;

For correspondence:- Cecilia Pancaldi Email: ceciliapancaldi@unife.it

Received: 7 April 2010 Accepted: 8 October 2010 Published: 23 December 2010

Citation: Alaribe FN, Maniero S, Pancaldi C. Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma Prognostic Marker: A Review of Osteopontin and Soluble Mesothelin Peptides. Trop J Pharm Res 2010; 9(6):605-613 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v9i6.12

© 2010 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

This article is a review of a series of three studies that proved the involvement of osteopontin as a prognostic marker in malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) cancers. The approach used involved synthesizing and analysing the three articles. The first proves the utilization of osteopontin and mesothelin for diagnostic and prognostic assessment of MPM in patients previously exposed to asbestos and those with pleural metastasis. The second proves that immunohistochemical analysis identified osteopontin to have a prognostic role from its expression in MPM. The third uses the specificity and sensitivity of serum osteopontin to distinguish patients with plueral mesothelioma from subjects with asbestos-related non-malignant diseases. Overall, these remarkable findings are important for understanding of expression of osteopontin in malignant mesothelial cells and in patients with MPM. The use of osteopontin as a prognostic marker in MPM is promising and such fine molecular studies certainly help in bringing osteopontin closer to clinical practice.

Keywords: Osteopontin, Mesothelioma, Prognostic marker