Immunocytochemical evidence of molecular photoreceptor markers in cerebellar medulloblastomas

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Abstract
With the use of antisera against bovine retinal S‐antigen and bovine opsin the authors demonstrate that in cerebellar medulloblastomas certain tumor cells display immunocytochemical properties characteristic of retinal photoreceptors and pinealocytes. S‐antigen‐like and opsin‐like immunoreactions occur in nine of 28 medulloblastomas investigated. All tumors displaying S‐antigen‐like immunoreactive neoplastic cells also contain opsin‐like immunoreactive cells; however, the opsin‐like immunoreactive cells were less frequent than the S‐antigen‐like immunoreactive cells throughout all positive cases. The immunoreactive cells displayed several long processes. Generally, both S‐antigen and opsin‐like immunoreactive cells considerably vary in number among individual tumors. The results indicate that certain neoplastic cells of medulloblastoma are capable of expression of photoreceptor‐specific proteins and, thus, may be closely related to tumor cells of retinoblastoma and pineocytomas previously shown to bind antisera against retinal S‐antigen and opsin. No S‐antigen and opsin‐like immununoreaction was found in malignant teratomas and germinomas of the pineal gland, oat cell tumors, astrocytomas, ependymomas, oligodendrogliomas, glioblastomas, gangliogliomas, gangliocytoma, ganglioneuroblastomas, neuroblas‐tomas, and esthesioneuroblastoma.