SPARC and glioma: We have previously confirmed that SPARC protein is undetectable in normal adult cerebral cortex; however, it was found to be highly expressed in gliomas of all grades, in both the tumor cells and angiogenic endothelial cells, and it was upregulated in angiogenic endothelial cells and reactive astrocytes in the tumor-adjacent brain tissue.10 We and others have demonstrated that SPARC promotes invasion in vitro11, 12 and in vivo.