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Making a tumour's bed: glioblastoma stem cells and the vascular niche

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 7, pages 733–736 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Parallel to the role that normal stem cells play in organogenesis, cancer stem cells are thought to be crucial for tumorigenesis. Understanding normal development might therefore lead to better treatments of cancer. We review recent data that stem cells of glioblastoma, a highly malignant brain tumour, seem to be dependent on cues from aberrant vascular niches that mimic the normal neural stem cell niche. These data have direct implications for cancer, highlighting the similarity between normal and malignant stem cells and identifying the tumour microenvironment as a target for new therapies.

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Figure 1: The normal and malignant neural stem cell niche.
Figure 2: The abc of targeting the glioma cancer stem cell niche.

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Acknowledgements

We apologize to those authors whose work we could not cite owing to space limitations. R.J.G. holds the Sydney Schlobohm Leadership Chair of Research from the Brain Tumour Society and is supported by grants from the US National Institutes of Health (R01CA129,541, P01CA96,832 and P30CA021,765), and the CERN Foundation and by the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC). J.N.R. is a Damon Runyon-Lilly Clinical Investigator and a Sidney Kimmel Cancer Foundation Scholar and is supported by grants from the US National Institutes of Health (NS047,409, NS054,276, and CA116,659), the Pediatric Brain Tumour Foundation of the United States, Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure, and the Childhood Brain Tumour Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Richard J. Gilbertson is at the Departments of Developmental Neurobiology and Oncology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, 332 North Lauderdale Street, Memphis, Tennessee 38,105, USA. Richard.Gilbertson@stjude.org,

    Richard J. Gilbertson

  2. Jeremy N. Rich is at the Departments of Medicine, Surgery, and Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina 27,710, USA. rich0001@mc.duke.edu,

    Jeremy N. Rich

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Gilbertson, R., Rich, J. Making a tumour's bed: glioblastoma stem cells and the vascular niche. Nat Rev Cancer 7, 733–736 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc2246

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