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Review
. 2022 Jan-Dec:31:9636897221102903.
doi: 10.1177/09636897221102903.

Effects of Lovastatin on Brain Cancer Cells

Efosa Amadasu  1 , Richard Kang  1 , Ahsan Usmani  1 , Cesario V Borlongan  1
Affiliations
Review

Effects of Lovastatin on Brain Cancer Cells

Efosa Amadasu et al. Cell Transplant. 2022 Jan-Dec.

Abstract

Although brain tumors occur less frequently than other forms of cancer, they have one of the bleakest prognoses with low survival rates. The conventional treatment for brain tumors includes surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. However, resistance to treatment remains a problem with recurrence shortly following. The resistance to treatment may be caused by cancer stem cells (CSCs), a subset of brain tumor cells with the affinity for self-renewal and differentiation into multiple cell lineages. An emerging approach to targeting CSCs in brain tumors is through repurposing the lipid-lowering medication, lovastatin. Lovastatin is a 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase inhibitor that impacts the mevalonate pathway. The inhibition of intermediates in the mevalonate pathway affects signaling cascades and oncogenes associated with brain tumor stem cells (BTSC). In this review, we show the possible mechanisms where lovastatin can target BTSC for different varieties of malignant brain tumors.

Keywords: brain cancer; signaling pathways; statins; stem cells.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Diagram of neural versus cancer stem cell differentiation. The model is a simplified version of the differentiation between neural stem cells (yellow) and brain tumor stem cells (purple) in the formation of brain tumors. Neural stem cells and brain tumor stem cells share similar characteristics such as self-renewal and differentiation. Neural stem cells differentiate into unrestricted progenitor cells which give rise to either glial progenitors or neural progenitors. The glial precursors differentiate into astrocytes and oligodendrocytes while the neural precursor will form the neuron. Similarly, brain tumor stem cells have the ability to generate a wide range of differentiated progeny. Brain tumor stem cells can develop from mutations accumulated in neural stem cells and in both their restricted and unrestricted progeny that have the ability to self-renew.
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