Deputy Chief Medical Technologist Yusuke Nakade of the Department of Clinical Laboratory, Kanazawa University Hospital, and Associate Professor Masashi Kinoshita and Professor Mitsutoshi Nakada of the Department of Neurosurgery, Associate Professor Moeko Shinohara and Professor Kenjiro Ono of the Department of Neurology, and Professor Yasunori Iwata and President Takashi Wada of the Department of Nephrology and Rheumatology at the Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Sciences, and their colleagues, in collaboration with KAGAMI, found that urinary D-asparagine levels were significantly decreased in patients with glioblastoma. These findings could be a major step in glioblastoma care. This study was published in Acta Neuropathologica Communications.
Provided by Kanazawa University
Glioblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor and is difficult to treat, with a 2-year survival rate of 50% or lower and mortality rate of close to 100%. The biggest issue in the treatment is delay in diagnosis, as many patients visit hospitals after the onset of neurological symptoms, and lesions are detected by diagnostic imaging, such as CT or MRI. Early detection can improve treatment outcomes; however, this requires the development of simple testing methods using blood and urine, which are commonly used. Recent studies have shown that cancer cells utilize amino acids as nutrients.
The research group first performed chiral amino acid analysis, in which optical isomers of amino acids (D- and L-forms) were analyzed separately using tumor tissue collected from patients with glioblastoma. D-asparagine levels in tumor tissues were increased compared with those in non-tumor tissues, whereas urinary D-asparagine concentrations in patients with glioblastoma were decreased compared with those in healthy controls. Urinary D-asparagine concentrations differentiated patients with glioblastoma from healthy participants accurately (sensitivity 88%, specificity 92%). Furthermore, urinary D-asparagine levels after glioblastoma removal increased to levels almost as high as those in healthy participants. These results suggest that glioblastoma tissue uptakes D-asparagine.
Urinary D-asparagine levels in mice implanted with glioblastoma in the brain were reduced similarly as those in humans. Thus, it is possible to determine the presence of glioblastoma in the brain by measuring urinary D-asparagine levels.
The results of this study indicate that urinary D-asparagine is a useful biomarker for the early diagnosis and severity assessment of glioblastoma. Moving forward, it will be necessary to validate this finding in a larger group of patients in collaboration with other institutions and to confirm the practical utility of measuring urinary D-asparagine levels as a diagnostic tool. The new perspective of using urine to evaluate the presence of brain tumors is expected to be a major advance in glioblastoma care.
Journal Information
Publication: Acta Neuropathologica Communications
Title: Urinary D-asparagine level is decreased by the presence of glioblastoma
DOI: 10.1186/s40478-024-01836-6
This article has been translated by JST with permission from The Science News Ltd. (https://sci-news.co.jp/). Unauthorized reproduction of the article and photographs is prohibited.