The origins of glioma: E Pluribus Unum? | Semantic Scholar (2024)

The mechanisms underlying glial tumor formation are addressed, paying special attention to cancer stem cells and the role of the microenvironment in preserving them and promoting tumor growth.

A comprehensive analysis of how gliomas initiate and progress is provided, taking into account the role of epigenetic modulation in the crosstalk of cancer cells with their environment.

The controversial topic of cancer stem cells applied to glioma is reviewed to provide neurosurgeons with a working overview and the role stem cells may play in the future management of gliomas is looked at.

It will be argued that this may be improbable, yielding to the original old concept of glial origin of glioma, as the emergence of cancer is most frequent in proliferating tissues, replication errors are considered to be at the base of this disease.

The aim of the current paper is to provide an overview of current knowledge on the role of cancer stem cells in the pathogenesis and treatment resistance of glioblastoma, along with future treatment options targeting GSCs.

The mechanisms underpinning radioresistance are reviewed, and isolating EVs from a GBM patient, supplying them with the necessary anti-cancer agent and the capability of recognizing a specified tissue-cell target, and reinjecting them into the original donor appears, at this time, as a reachable objective of personalized medicine.

The diversity of CSC lineages present in GBM and how this glioma stem cell (GSC) mosaicism drives global intratumoral heterogeneity constituted by complex and spatially distinct local microenvironments is reviewed.

This review describes how the tumor cells (TC) alter the endothelial cell (EC) physiology in a way that favors tumorigenesis and the role of important mediators, like the gasotransmitter nitric oxide and different types of reactive oxygen species and the systems producing them.

A review of a wide range of studies that have shown that several signaling pathways involved in neural development, including basic helix–loop–helix, Wnt–β‐catenin, bone morphogenetic proteins–Smads, epidermal growth factor–epider mal growth factor receptor, and Notch, play important roles in GBM pathogenesis highlights the significance of these pathways in the context of developing treatments for GBM.

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Although a comprehensive view of the genetic lesions encountered in malignant gliomas has been compiled, substantive conceptual and practical barriers remain in assigning functional significance to these genetic changes and in harnessing this basic information into the development of drugs that make a difference in patient care.

It is found that tumor-derived progenitors form neurospheres that can be passaged at clonal density and are able to self-renew, which may have important implications for treatment by means of specific targeting of stem-like cells within brain tumors.

The identification and purification of a cancer stem cell from human brain tumors of different phenotypes that possesses a marked capacity for proliferation, self-renewal, and differentiation is reported.

Improvement in molecular models of glioma pathogenesis will expand the capacity to more effectively prognose patients and to design rational therapeutic strategies, particularly among the low- grade and anaplastic astrocytomas.

The findings suggest that this model comprised of HNGC‐1 and H NGC‐2 cells would be a useful system for studying pathways involved in self‐renewal of stem cells and their transformation to cancer stem cells.

No evidence of a stem-cell derived genetic signature specific for GBM in contact with the SVZ is found, but there was a relationship between stem cell gene expression and survival.

It is shown that the cell of origin for glioma may be a committed glial progenitor cell, and platelet-derived growth factor B transfer to OPCs could induce gliomas with an incidence of 33%.

Results demonstrate that reversion of mature astrocytes to an embryonic state without genomic manipulation is sufficient to sensitize them to oncogenic stress.

This work demonstrates a versatile and highly reproducible adult mouse model of glioma, which can be easily incorporated into preclinical studies and demonstrated that, in adult mice, gliomas may arise not only when injecting in the subventricular zone but also when injected in the cortex and cerebellum.

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