Department of Neurosurgery, the 2nd Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, No. 1055 Sanxiang Street, Suzhou, Jiangsu 215004, PR China.
Brain Res Bull. 2010 Jul 30;82(5-6):308-12. doi: 10.1016/j.brainresbull.2010.06.006. Epub 2010 Jun 25.
The transdifferentiation of normal stem cells in many kinds of tissues or organs has been studied. However, whether glioma stem cells can transdifferentiate is seldom reported. Meanwhile, the mechanism of angiogenesis in tumors is in disputations, and it is still unknown that whether glioma stem/progenitor cells (GSPCs) participate into angiogenesis in glioma. In this study, we cultivated GSPCs in endothelial differentiation medium for 10 days and found they present to be the typical "flagstone" appearance of vascular endothelial cell (VEC); when cultured on Matrigel, GSPCs gradually formed tubular-like structures in vitro, and cells, which formed the tubular-like structures, showed similar ultrastructural characteristics of VEC under a transmission electron microscope. Furthermore, when cultured in hypoxia or oxygen-glucose deprivation for 4h, GSPCs transcribed and expressed molecular markers of VEC, including CD31, CD34 and vWF. These results indicated that GSPCs could participate into angiogenesis of glioma by transdifferentiating into VEC-like cells.
已经有研究报道多种组织或器官中的正常干细胞的转分化。然而，神经胶质瘤干细胞是否能够转分化则鲜有报道。同时，肿瘤血管生成的机制存在争议，神经胶质瘤干细胞/祖细胞（GSPCs）是否参与到神经胶质瘤的血管生成过程中仍然未知。在本研究中，我们将 GSPCs 在血管内皮细胞分化培养基中培养 10 天，发现其呈现出典型的“石板”样血管内皮细胞（VEC）外观；当在 Matrigel 上培养时，GSPCs 逐渐在体外形成管状结构，在透射电子显微镜下，形成管状结构的细胞表现出与 VEC 相似的超微结构特征。此外，当在缺氧或氧糖剥夺条件下培养 4h 后，GSPCs 转录并表达了 VEC 的分子标志物，包括 CD31、CD34 和 vWF。这些结果表明，GSPCs 可以通过向 VEC 样细胞转分化来参与神经胶质瘤的血管生成。
