Title : Characteristic features of stem cells in glioblastomas: From cellular biology to genetics
Abstract:
Glioblastoma’s are the most common type of primary brain tumour in adults and are the most lethal and least successfully treated solid tumours. Recently, research into the area of stem cells in brain tumour development has gained moment. However, due to the relatively new and novel hypothesis that a subpopulation of cancer cells in each malignancy has the potential for tumour initiation and repopulation the data in this area of this research is still in its infancy.
This review presentation is aimed at attempting to bring together research in this field carried out so far in order to build an understanding of glioblastoma stem cells. This is important for two mains reasons. Firstly, interest in this area of oncology has increased dramatically in recent years. This is evident from the amount of research being produced and published on this topic. A simple keyword search of ‘glioblastoma stem cells’ in ScienceDirect produced over 27,000 results. Secondly, as previously mentioned glioblastomas are the most common type of primary brain tumour and one of the most lethal solid tumours but least successfully treated solid tumours with a median survival time of only 12 months. Compared with the advances in the treatment of other types of tumours, the poor prognosis for glioblastoma patients has improved minimally over decades, underscoring the challenges and difficulties in effectively treating these fatal cancers.
Initially, we consider glioblastoma stem cells at a morphological and cellular level including that neuronal stem cells differ according to the region of the brain in which they are located and therefore depending on the where a glioblastoma originates means glioblastoma stem cells may have specific mutations unique to the location of origin. Important cell markers for these stem cells are also discussed including CD133, SOX-2, CXCR4, and L1CAM. Being able to identify reliable and specific markers for glioblastomas has obvious benefit in both providing opportunities for tagging these cells so that the microscopic tumour burden can be located and providing targets for pharmaceutical therapies. The presentation also covers signalling pathways and genetic mutations which are involved in the development of glioblastomas stem cells. Understanding these changes leads to greater insight into how normal stem cells develop into carcinogenic cells and what changes are required in order for this process to occur.
