CXCR4-Expressing Glial Precursor Cells Demonstrate Enhanced Migratory Tropism for Glioma.docVIP

Journal of Cancer Therapy, 2012, 3, 1086-1091 /10.4236/jct.2012.36142 Published Online December 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jct) CXCR4-Expressing Glial Precursor Cells Demonstrate Enhanced Migratory Tropism for Glioma Moneeb Ehtesham , Reid C. Thompson * Department of Neurological Surgery, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, USA. * Email: moneeb.ehtesham@ Received July 6 , 2012; revised August 8 , 2012; accepted August 17 , 2012 th th th ABSTRACT Malignant glioma remains one of the most intractable of human cancers principally due to the highly infiltrative nature of these neoplasms. The use of neural precursor cells (NPC) has received considerable attention based on their ability to selectively migrate towards disseminated areas of tumor in vivo and their described ability to deliver tumor-directed therapies specifically to infiltrating tumor cells. Fundamental to optimizing the use of these cells for potential clinical translation is the development of an understanding regarding the biologic cues that govern their ability to migrate to- wards infiltrative glioma foci. To this end, in this paper we detail that NPC selected for double-expression of the glial-precursor marker A2B5 and the cell-surface chemokine receptor, CXCR4, demonstrate enhanced in vitro glioma- directed tropism. These findings demonstrate the relevance of these markers for the phenotypic segregation of an opti- mally tumor-tropic NPC sub-population as a means of enhancing NPC-based therapeutic strategies for the treatment of glioma. Keywords: Glioma; CXCR4; Neural Precursor Cells; Brain Tumor(s) 1. Introduction therapeutic success in pre-clinical models of glioma [2-8]. Notable, however, has been our consistent finding that only a sub-population of NPC appears to display this glioma-tropic migrat