Glioblastoma stem-like cells

Patient-derived cancer cell lines can be very useful to investigate genetic as well as epigenetic mechanisms of transformation and to test new drugs. In a multi-centric study, Lazzarini et al. performed genomic and transcriptomics of a large set of patient-derived glioblastoma (GBM) stem-like cells (GSCs).

94 (80 I surgery/14 II surgery) and 53 (42 I surgery/11 II surgery) GSCs lines underwent whole exome and transcriptome analysis, respectively.

Exome sequencing revealed TP53 as the main mutated gene (41/94 samples, 44%), followed by PTEN (33/94, 35%), RB1 (16/94, 17%) and NF1 (15/94, 16%), among other genes associated to brain tumors. One GSC sample bearing a BRAF p.V600E mutation showed sensitivity in vitro to a BRAF inhibitor. Gene Ontology and Reactome analysis uncovered several biological processes mostly associated with gliogenesis and glial cell differentiation, S - adenosylmethionine metabolic process, mismatch repair, and methylation. Comparison of I and II surgery samples disclosed a similar distribution of mutated genes, with an overrepresentation of mutations in mismatch repair, cell cycle, p53, and methylation pathways in I surgery samples, and of mutations in receptor tyrosine kinase and MAPK signaling pathways in II surgery samples. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering of RNA-seq data produced 3 clusters characterized by distinctive sets of up-regulated genes and signaling pathways.

The availability of a large set of fully molecularly characterized Glioblastoma stem-like cells represents a valuable public resource to support the advancement of precision oncology for the glioblastoma treatment ¹⁾