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62nd Annual Meeting of the German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC)
Joint Meeting with the Polish Society of Neurosurgeons (PNCH)

German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC)

7 - 11 May 2011, Hamburg

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Aberrant symmetric proliferation of stem-like tumor cells influences tumor malignancy in glioblastoma

Meeting Abstract

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  • B. Campos - Sektion Neurochirurgische Forschung, Neurochirurgische Klinik, Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg, Heidelberg
  • A. Baader - Sektion Neurochirurgische Forschung, Neurochirurgische Klinik, Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg, Heidelberg
  • C. Herold-Mende - Sektion Neurochirurgische Forschung, Neurochirurgische Klinik, Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg, Heidelberg
  • A. Unterberg - Sektion Neurochirurgische Forschung, Neurochirurgische Klinik, Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg, Heidelberg

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie. Polnische Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgen. 62. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie (DGNC), Joint Meeting mit der Polnischen Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgen (PNCH). Hamburg, 07.-11.05.2011. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2011. DocMO.07.03

doi: 10.3205/11dgnc040, urn:nbn:de:0183-11dgnc0409

Published: April 28, 2011

© 2011 Campos et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

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Objective: Stem-like tumor cells endowed with enhanced self-renewal capacity are believed to drive tumor growth in malignant gliomas. So far a variety of surrogate markers has been proposed to characterize and enrich these cells, emphasizing the need for devising new isolation methods based on common functional and phenotypic criteria.

Methods: In this study we made use of the neural colony-forming cell assay (NCFCA), a recently published self-renewal assay, to screen for clonogenic cell subpopulations in malignant gliomas.

Results: In a large panel of glioblastoma cell lines (n=24) we identified a series of cell lines enriched for cells with enhanced self-renewal capacity. Employing isolation and re-plating techniques, we were able to identify individual cells with the unique ability to reinitiate growth of secondary cell clones. Through label-retention experiments we could further show that these cells invariably re-established a cellular hierarchy in terms of self-renewal capacity through a series of asymmetric cell divisions. However, the ratio of symmetric to asymmetric cell "fate" divisions seemed to be pathologically increased. Finally, we were able to establish a link between the increased self-renewal in these cell lines in vitro and a poor overall survival among the corresponding patients.

Conclusions: Altogether, the NCFCA was found to be a valuable, marker-independent assay to study cells with aberrant self-renewal capacity in glioblastoma.