Can malignancy in insulinoma be predicted by the expression patterns of beta 1,6 branching of asparagine-linked oligosaccharides and polysialic acid of the neural cell adhesion molecule?

Human Insulinomas: Clinical, Cellular, and Molecular Aspects

Insulinoma is the most frequently encountered functioning endocrine pancreatic tumor in humans. In this overview we summarize morphological and clinical features of insulinomas, report about the proinsulin-insulin conversion in normal and neoplastic B-cells, discuss the new classification, the criteria of malignancy, and the clonal composition of endocrine pancreatic tumors, and outline recent findings on the molecular pathology of these tumors.