Italian National Agency for Energy New Technologies and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), Division of Health Protection Technologies, Via Anguillarese 301, 00123 Rome, Italy.
Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences, University of Tuscia, Largo dell'Università, snc, 01100 Viterbo, Italy.
Int J Mol Sci. 2022 Mar 10;23(6):3001. doi: 10.3390/ijms23063001.
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common brain cancer in adults. GBM starts from a small fraction of poorly differentiated and aggressive cancer stem cells (CSCs) responsible for aberrant proliferation and invasion. Due to extreme tumor heterogeneity, actual therapies provide poor positive outcomes, and cancers usually recur. Therefore, alternative approaches, possibly targeting CSCs, are necessary against GBM. Among emerging therapies, high intensity ultra-short pulsed electric fields (PEFs) are considered extremely promising and our previous results demonstrated the ability of a specific electric pulse protocol to selectively affect medulloblastoma CSCs preserving normal cells. Here, we tested the same exposure protocol to investigate the response of U87 GBM cells and U87-derived neurospheres. By analyzing different in vitro biological endpoints and taking advantage of transcriptomic and bioinformatics analyses, we found that, independent of CSC content, PEF exposure affected cell proliferation and differentially regulated hypoxia, inflammation and P53/cell cycle checkpoints. PEF exposure also significantly reduced the ability to form new neurospheres and inhibited the invasion potential. Importantly, exclusively in U87 neurospheres, PEF exposure changed the expression of stem-ness/differentiation genes. Our results confirm this physical stimulus as a promising treatment to destabilize GBM, opening up the possibility of developing effective PEF-mediated therapies.
多形性胶质母细胞瘤(GBM)是成年人中最常见的脑癌。GBM 起源于一小部分分化不良且具有侵袭性的癌症干细胞(CSC),这些细胞负责异常增殖和侵袭。由于肿瘤异质性极高,实际的治疗方法提供的积极效果较差,癌症通常会复发。因此,需要针对 GBM 采用替代方法,可能针对 CSC。在新兴疗法中,高强度超短脉冲电场(PEF)被认为极具前景,我们之前的研究结果表明,特定的电脉冲方案能够选择性地影响髓母细胞瘤 CSC,同时保留正常细胞。在这里,我们测试了相同的暴露方案,以研究 U87 GBM 细胞和 U87 衍生的神经球的反应。通过分析不同的体外生物学终点,并利用转录组和生物信息学分析,我们发现,无论 CSC 含量如何,PEF 暴露都会影响细胞增殖,并差异调节缺氧、炎症和 P53/细胞周期检查点。PEF 暴露还显著降低了形成新神经球的能力并抑制了侵袭潜力。重要的是,仅在 U87 神经球中,PEF 暴露改变了干细胞/分化基因的表达。我们的研究结果证实了这种物理刺激作为一种有前途的治疗方法,可以破坏 GBM 的稳定性,为开发有效的 PEF 介导治疗方法开辟了可能性。