We investigated whether the postoperative concentration of circulating transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) yields prognostic value in patients with glioblastoma multiforme (gbm). Blood was collected from 20 healthy volunteers and in 28 patients with mainly glioblastoma multiforme (gbm), both before radiotherapy, during and after 4 weeks of irradiation. Both latent and active TGF-β were quantified directly in the blood plasma using a bioassay with mink lung epithelial cells transfected with a plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 promotor luciferase construct. The average plasma concentration of TGF-β before radiotherapy for gbm patients was 26.2 ng/ml, which was significant higher than in normal controls (16.2 ng/ml, p=0.02). No correlation was found between TGF-β and survival, nor between plasma TGF-β and the diameter of the postoperative contrast-enhancing lesion. The pattern of plasma TGF-β during radiotherapy did not correlate with the clinical course of patients, nor with the fractionation scheme. Plasma TGF-β did not reveal a clinical useful prognostic value for gbm patients, which is partly due to the large variation in TGF-β plasma levels between individual patients.

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