Glioma Stem Cells in the Context of Oncogenesis

  • Johan Bengzon
  • Elisabet Englund
  • Leif G. Salford
  • Xiaolong Fan
Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Cancer Drug Discovery and Development book series (CDD&D)

Abstract

Glioma is the most common primary tumor of adult central nervous system (CNS). Gliomas are hitherto classified according to morphological criteria, which is based on the assumption that relatively well-differentiated tumors are derived from mature glial cells, and poorly differentiated gliomas are derived from embryonic-like residual progenitor cells. Although the progression of grade I gliomas is seldomly observed, grade II gliomas often progress into grade III and IV gliomas, and grade IV glioma is also called glioblastoma (GBM) with dismal clinical outcomes. Recent studies have demonstrated that low as well as high-grade gliomas contain sphere initiating cells in neurosphere assays, a key property common to normal neural stem and progenitor cells. Glioma spheres can renew for multiple rounds and exhibit multilineage differentiation capacity. Sphere and xenograft-initiating glioma cells are operationally classified as glioma stem cells, and they represent a key target for glioma therapy. However, the relation between the putative glioma stem cells and the tumor initiating cells remains controversial. In this chapter, we review the evidence for the existence of glioma stem cells, and we discuss their relation to candidate glioma initiating cells using a glial cell ontogeny-based approach.

Keywords

Glioma Cell Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Cancer Stem Cell Neural Stem Cell Glioma Stem Cell 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Humana Press, a part of Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

Authors and Affiliations

  • Johan Bengzon
    • 1
  • Elisabet Englund
    • 1
  • Leif G. Salford
    • 1
  • Xiaolong Fan
    • 1
  1. 1.Division of Neurosurgery, Rausing laboratory, Department of Clinical SciencesUniversity HospitalLundSweden

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