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Cellular origin of glioblastoma and its implication in precision therapy

Cellular & Molecular Immunology volume 15, pages 737–739 (2018)Cite this article

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common malignant primary tumor in the central nervous system. Despite advances in neurosurgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, the median survival time of GBM patients is only 9 to 16 months.1 Therefore, GBM is considered one of the deadliest human cancers. In the past two decades, many efforts have been made by scientists and clinicians to develop new drugs to improve current therapies. Unfortunately, most efforts have not achieved long-term remissions in clinical trials, even though some of them are promising in animal models, making treatment options still limited.2

During the past 10 years, great progress in cancer genomic studies have revealed genetic mutations that may serve as drivers in many types of cancers. Knowledge about those driver mutations greatly improves our understanding of cancer biology and leads to new diagnostic strategies and novel cancer therapies, such as targeting therapy. In melanoma, for example, compared to traditional chemotherapy, Vemurafenib, a BRAF kinase inhibitor, shows great advantages for patients possessing specific mutations in the BRAF gene.3 Like melanoma, the key genetic lesions involved in gliomagenesis have been reported. However, there has been very limited progress in GBM therapy. Therefore, new insights and ideas are urgently needed to reveal the developmental biology of malignant GBM. Here, we rethink GBM from its cellular origin and try to elucidate the implications for GBM precision therapy.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by NSFC81302187, CWS14C063 and SIMM1705KF-10 (State Key Laboratory of Drug Research).

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  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology, School of Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 22903, VA, USA

    Maojin Yao & Shuo Diao

  2. Department of Pathophysiology, Wannan Medical College, Wuhu, 241002, China

    Shu Li

  3. Department of Neurosurgery, Changzheng Hospital, Second Affiliated Hospital of Second Military Medical University, 415 Fengyang Road, Shanghai, 200003, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaojun Wu, Hua He & Yicheng Lu

  4. Department of Neurosurgery, First Affiliated Hospital, Dalian Medical University, Dalian, 116044, People’s Republic of China

    Shuo Diao

  5. Brain Tumor Institute, University of California, San Diego, 92093-0695, CA, USA

    Guoxin Zhang

  6. State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 201203, China

    Hua He

  7. Department of Neurosurgery, Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, 200025, China

    Liuguan Bian

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  1. Maojin Yao
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  6. Hua He
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Correspondence to Hua He or Liuguan Bian.

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Yao, M., Li, S., Wu, X. et al. Cellular origin of glioblastoma and its implication in precision therapy. Cell Mol Immunol 15, 737–739 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/cmi.2017.159

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