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Exploring the pathological relationships between adamantinomatous craniopharyngioma and contiguous structures with tumor origin

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Abstract

Purpose

Identifying relationships between craniopharyngiomas (CPs) and contiguous structures, and tumor origin are crucial for treatments. This study attempted to explore the relationships and tumor origin.

Methods

CPs that underwent endoscopic surgeries were enrolled. The interfacial specimens of CPs attaching the hypothalamus, pituitary stalk (PS), pituitary grand (PG), optic chiasma (OC) and brain tissue (BT) were pathologically examined. Boundaries between CPs and these structures were observed during operations. Expression of β-catenin and stem cell markers were analyzed to explore the tumor origin. Outcomes of patients were assessed.

Results

A total of 34 CPs were categorized into two groups based on the locations of finger-like protrusions (FP). Group A comprised 18 CPs with FP only present in the specimens attaching to hypothalamus. The surface of these CPs was fused with hypothalamus under endoscopic videos. However, the specimens attaching to the PS, PG, OC, and BT showed no FP. Clear boundaries was observed between these CPs and these structures. Group B comprised 16 CPs with FP only present in the specimens attaching to PS. The tumor surface was fused with PS. Specimens attaching to the hypothalamus, PG, OC and BT showed no FP. Clear boundary was observed among these CPs with these structures. These results implied CPs only invaded a certain part of hypothalamic-pituitary axis. β-catenin and stem cells markers mainly distributed in the FP tissues of both groups. Patients in group B achieved better outcomes than group A.

Conclusions

CPs only invade the hypothalamic-pituitary axis with FP and the FP would be the tumor origin.

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Data availability

The datasets and the corresponding videos of endoscopic surgeries generated of this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge all the staff at Department of Pathology, the Ninth Hospital of Nanchang, including Ping Zhang, Wu Wang, Tianmin Zhou, QingMei Zhong, Yang Gui, Wenli Liu and Di Yao, for their assistance of histopathologic analysis.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 82060246 and 81460381), Ganpo555 engineering excellence of Jiangxi science and Technology Department (2013) and the Key research and invention plan of Jiangxi Science and Technology Department (20192BBG70026).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurosurgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, 17 Yong Wai Zheng Street, Nanchang, 330006, China

    Shaoyang Li, Bowen Wu, Jie Wu, Le Yang, Chenxing Yang, Zhongjian Huang, Chengbin Pan, Minde Li, Youqing Yang, Bin Tang, Shenhao Xie, Xiao Wu, Suyue Zheng, Chunliang Wang & Tao Hong

  2. Department of Pathology, The Ninth Hospital of Nanchang, Nanchang, 330002, China

    Yingqun Xiao

  3. Department of Neurosurgery, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510515, China

    Le Yang

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  1. Shaoyang Li
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Contributions

Conception design and supervision: TH; Data curation: SL, BW and CY; Formal analysis: JW and ZH; Analysis and interpretation of data: BT and SX; Investigation and Specimens collection: ML, YY and CP; Histopathologic examination and evaluation: YX and SL; Drafting the article: SL; The schematic diagram drawing: BW; Critical revising the article and Methodology: LY, CW and SL; Statistical analysis: XW and SZ. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tao Hong.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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The authors declare that they have no competing and financial interests.

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the ethics committee of the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University (2021-8-028).

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Written informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

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Li, S., Wu, B., Xiao, Y. et al. Exploring the pathological relationships between adamantinomatous craniopharyngioma and contiguous structures with tumor origin. J Neurooncol 159, 485–497 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11060-022-04084-7

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