Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: A key feature of glioblastoma that makes it difficult to treat is the highly invasive nature of glioblastoma cells. These invasive cells lie beyond the reach of acceptable surgical margins and focused radiation therapy, making recurrence inevitable. Further complicating the situation is that cells can exist in a variety of substates, and can interconvert between them, making heterogeneity and plasticity potential means of resisting treatments focused solely on one substate or another. Examples of these substates include those defined not only by transcriptomic features, but also by functional features including cell migration, with cells exhibiting varying degrees of migration speeds.1 The study of Ratliff et al. in this issue of Neuro-Oncology sheds important new light on the ability of cells to sustain their proliferative capacity while also being highly invasive.2 A major hypothesis that Ratliff et al. address is the “Go or Grow” hypothesis, which posits that cells exist in either of 2 states, a highly migratory-slowly proliferating state or a slowly migrating-rapidly proliferating state. The Go or Grow hypothesis has its origins in the analysis of glioblastoma cell migration in vitro.3 Since then, the Go or Grow hypothesis has been highly influential, not only in neuro-oncology, but across cancer research. In addition, the Go or Grow hypothesis attracted the attention of mathematical modelers, leading to numerous studies of the potential impact of such phenotype switching in tumor progression. However, whether such phenotype switching is occurring in vivo has remained an open question.
Source: Neuro-Oncology
Author: David J Odde
Institution: University of Minnesota
Language: English
Subfield: Genetics
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4386947457