Human Glioma Endothelial Cells With Stem cell properties

Abstract

Abstract Glioblastoma (GBM) tumor relapse is attributed to presence of therapy defying Glioma stem cells (GSCs). GSCs have been shown to trans-differentiate into endothelial-like cells. However, the influence of tumor micro-environment on endothelial cells is not clearly understood. Here, we investigated whether tumor micro-environment conditioning can alter endothelial cell phenotype and endow them with stem cell-like properties. For this, we establishing a battery of primary human glioma endothelial cell cultures (hGECs) and characterized them for purity in multiple in vitro, in vivo assays. Our data shows that hGECs harbored stemness and multi-lineage differentiation potential as assessed in serum free growth assay, sphere forming assay, limiting dilution assay, and in a serum-induced differentiation assay where Nestin and CD31 co-expressing hGECs could spontaneously differentiation into GFAP positive cells. Moreover, immunohistochemistry analysis of human GBM tumors showed that tumor vessel regions expressed two key stem cell specific markers Nestin and Mushashi. Together, our data shows that tumor-specific endothelial cells are enriched with stem cell properties in GBM.