Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is the most common lethal brain tumour associated with dismal survival rate. GBM is considered to be an incurable malignancy as these tumours evade all intricate attempts of therapy and no contemporary chemotherapeutic regimen is effective. Although the existence of cancer stem cells (CSCs) is still debatable, it is widely accepted that GBM has a small population of cells expressing CSC markers (~1%) that are highly resistant to chemo-radiation therapy. Recent evidence indicates that hypoxia induces cancer stem cell (CSC) phenotypes via epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) that promote therapeutic resistance in solid tumours. Given that GBMs are extensively hypooxygenated heterogenous tumours, understanding the molecular relationship between hypoxia, biology of CSCs, EMT and chemoresistance would be invaluable for development of drugs that can target CSCs. Evidence suggests that hypoxia inducible factors (HIFs), NF-B and aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) together orchestrate the stemness and chemoresistance in hypoxia induced CSCs. But the insights on the mechanisms still remain obscure. In this study we used an in vitro GBM CSC and hypoxia model along with NF-B-p65 and HIF transfected GBM cell lines to investigate the relationship between HIFs, NF-B activation and ALDH activity and their role in chemoresistance. The findings of this study demonstrated that GBM cells grown as spheres consist of a vast proportion of hypoxic cells with elevated CSC and EMT markers suggesting hypoxia induced EMT. GBM-CSCs are chemoresistant and displayed increased levels of HIFs, NF-B and ALDH activity. It was also observed that stable transfection of GBM cells with NF-B-p65 or HIFs induced CSC and EMT markers indicating their essential role in maintaining CSC phenotypes. The study also highlighted the importance of NF-B and ALDH in driving chemoresistance and the potential role of NF-B as the master regulator of hypoxia induced stemness in GBM cells. In this study, we used Disulfiram (DS), an anti-alcoholism drug, in combination with copper (Cu) to target the hypoxia-NF-B axis and inhibit ALDH activity to reverse chemoresistance in GBM CSCs. We showed that DS/Cu is cytotoxic to GBM cells and completely eradicated the resistant CSC population at low nanomolar levels in vitro. We also demonstrated that DS/Cu effectively inhibited GBM in vivo using newly formulated PLGA-DS nanoparticles. DS is an FDA approved drug with low/no toxicity to normal tissues and can freely pass through the blood brain barrier (BBB). Further study may lead to quick translation of DS into clinical trials.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:680898 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Kannappan, Vinodh |
| Publisher | University of Wolverhampton |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/2436/600922 |
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