Glial tumours are a devastating, poorly understood condition carrying a gloomy 
prognosis for which clinicians sorely lack reliable predictive parameters 
facilitating a sound treatment strategy. Tp73, a p53 family member, expresses 
two main classes of isoforms--transactivatory activity (TA)p73 and 
DeltaTAp73--exhibiting tumour suppressor gene and oncogene properties, 
respectively. The authors examined their expression status in high- and 
low-grade adult gliomas. Isoform-specific real-time reverse 
transcription-polymerase chain reaction was used for the analysis of Tp73 
isoform transcript expression in a series of 51 adult patients harbouring glial 
tumours, in order to compare tumour grades with each other, and with 
non-tumoural samples obtained from epileptic patients as well. Our data 
demonstrate increase of TAp73 and DeltaTAp73 transcript levels at onset and 
early stage of the disease. We also show that DeltaEx2-3 isoform expression in 
low-grade tumours anticipates clinical and imaging progression to higher grades, 
and correlates to the patients' survival. Expression levels of P1 promoter 
generated Tp73 isoforms--and particularly DeltaEx2-3--indeed allow for 
prediction of the clinical progression of low-grade gliomas in adults. Our data 
are the first such molecular biology report regarding low-grade tumours and as 
such should be of help for sound decision-making.