Publication Date:
2010-11-26
Description:
Glioblastoma is a highly angiogenetic malignancy, the neoformed vessels of which are thought to arise by sprouting of pre-existing brain capillaries. The recent demonstration that a population of glioblastoma stem-like cells (GSCs) maintains glioblastomas indicates that the progeny of these cells may not be confined to the neural lineage. Normal neural stem cells are able to differentiate into functional endothelial cells. The connection between neural stem cells and the endothelial compartment seems to be critical in glioblastoma, where cancer stem cells closely interact with the vascular niche and promote angiogenesis through the release of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and stromal-derived factor 1 (refs 5-9). Here we show that a variable number (range 20-90%, mean 60.7%) of endothelial cells in glioblastoma carry the same genomic alteration as tumour cells, indicating that a significant portion of the vascular endothelium has a neoplastic origin. The vascular endothelium contained a subset of tumorigenic cells that produced highly vascularized anaplastic tumours with areas of vasculogenic mimicry in immunocompromised mice. In vitro culture of GSCs in endothelial conditions generated progeny with phenotypic and functional features of endothelial cells. Likewise, orthotopic or subcutaneous injection of GSCs in immunocompromised mice produced tumour xenografts, the vessels of which were primarily composed of human endothelial cells. Selective targeting of endothelial cells generated by GSCs in mouse xenografts resulted in tumour reduction and degeneration, indicating the functional relevance of the GSC-derived endothelial vessels. These findings describe a new mechanism for tumour vasculogenesis and may explain the presence of cancer-derived endothelial-like cells in several malignancies.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Ricci-Vitiani, Lucia -- Pallini, Roberto -- Biffoni, Mauro -- Todaro, Matilde -- Invernici, Gloria -- Cenci, Tonia -- Maira, Giulio -- Parati, Eugenio Agostino -- Stassi, Giorgio -- Larocca, Luigi Maria -- De Maria, Ruggero -- England -- Nature. 2010 Dec 9;468(7325):824-8. doi: 10.1038/nature09557. Epub 2010 Nov 21.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Hematology, Oncology and Molecular Medicine, Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Viale Regina Elena 299, Rome 00161, Italy.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21102434" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Biomarkers, Tumor/metabolism
;
*Cell Differentiation
;
Cell Line, Tumor
;
Cell Lineage
;
Chromosome Aberrations
;
Endothelial Cells/metabolism/*pathology
;
Endothelium, Vascular/*pathology
;
Glioblastoma/*blood supply/genetics/*pathology
;
Humans
;
In Situ Hybridization, Fluorescence
;
Mice
;
Mice, Inbred NOD
;
Mice, SCID
;
Mice, Transgenic
;
Models, Biological
;
Neoplasm Transplantation/pathology
;
Neovascularization, Pathologic/genetics/*pathology
;
Neural Stem Cells/metabolism/*pathology
;
Transplantation, Heterologous/pathology
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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