Abstract
Malignant gliomas are among the most intractable brain cancers. Neural stem cells
(NSC) are tissue-specific stem cells with self-renewal capacity and the potential
to differentiate into glia and neurons. It has been proposed that NSC could serve
as a therapeutic vehicle for the treatment of gliomas. Previous studies showed that
NSC, after being implanted into the brain, could migrate to the invading tumor border
and target infiltrating tumor cells. These findings suggested that NSC and gliomas
could interact, although the mechanism is still not well understood. Here we report
that the stem-cell state of NSC is disrupted and NSCs become differentiated when they
are co-cultured in vitro with a medium in which glioma cells have been cultured (conditioned medium). The
ratio of neurons in these differentiated cells is significantly higher than that in
the controls (NSC cultured in regular medium). Conditioned medium in which primary
NSC have been grown can inhibit proliferation of glioma cells, an effect that was
greater with NSC conditioned medium of embryonic mice than neonatal mice. These results
suggest that glioma cells and NSC can interact at the niche or micro-environment level,
potentially leading to proliferation and differentiation of NSC and suppression of
proliferation of glioma cells. These findings may shed new light on the development
of novel strategies for the treatment of malignant gliomas.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
April 4,
2009
Received:
November 7,
2008
Identification
Copyright
© 2009 Elsevier Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
