Abstract
Tumor heterogeneity is a hallmark of cancer and a determinant of malignant behavior. How tumor heterogeneity arises is thus of fundamental importance. Gliomas display oncostreams, self-organizing multicellular fascicles of elongated, aligned, collectively motile glioma cells, that establish dynamic heterogeneity throughout gliomas. Gliomas exhibit two collective motion patterns: streams, displaying bidirectional collective motion, and flocks, displaying unidirectional collective motion. Oncostreams function as highways to facilitate the intratumoral spread of tumoral and non-tumoral cells. Detailed quantitative and deep learning analysis of rodent and human gliomas uncovered that the density of oncostreams correlates positively with glioma aggressiveness. Our study establishes the self-organizing dynamic nature of gliomas, and its role in setting up dynamic tumor heterogeneity and consequently tumor malignant behavior.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
