Therapy response in brain tumor cells is linked to disease prognosis
Glioblastoma is a very aggressive tumor form and affected patients only survive for, on average, approximately a year after diagnosis. Researchers believe that the difficulties in treating the disease is caused by cells in the tumors called glioma-initiating cells (GICs), a kind of stem cells that can start growing again, after treatment has been finished. The new results from Uppsala University show that a single tumor contained GICs in different states that are differently resistant to therapy. Cell states that were resistant to radiation were also resistant to drugs, and states that were resistant to one drugs tended to be resistant to most of the other tested drugs. "Another interesting result was that th e GICs did not fall into distinct response groups. Instead the difference in their response can best be described as a continuum of cells with different resistance levels. We also discovered a relationship between the resistance level and molecular characteristics of ...