RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Transcription factor-based gene therapy to treat glioblastoma through direct neuronal conversion
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.08.19.257444
DO 10.1101/2020.08.19.257444
A1 Xin Wang
A1 Zifei Pei
A1 Aasma Hossain
A1 Yuting Bai
A1 Gong Chen
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/08/27/2020.08.19.257444.abstract
AB Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most prevalent and aggressive adult primary cancer in the central nervous system (CNS). Therapeutic approaches for glioblastoma are under intense investigation, such as the emerging immunotherapy, but so far only marginal progress has been made due to the heterogeneity and highly invasive nature of glioblastoma. Here, we propose an alternative approach to tackle GBM through reprogramming proliferative GBM cells into non-proliferative neurons. We report efficient neuronal conversion from human GBM cells by overexpressing single neural transcription factor Neurogenic differentiation 1 (NeuroD1), Neurogenin-2 (Neurog2) or Achaete-scute homolog 1 (Ascl1). Subtype characterization reveals that the majority of Neurog2- and NeuroD1-converted neurons are glutamatergic, while Ascl1 favors GABAergic neuron generation. The GBM cell-converted neurons not only express pan-neuronal markers, such as NeuN and MAP2, but also exhibit neuron-specific electrophysiological activities. We further conducted transcriptome analyses to investigate the underlying cell conversion mechanism. Our RNA-seq analyses discover that neuronal genes are activated among glioma cells after overexpression of neural transcription factors, and different signaling pathways are activated by different neural transcription factors. Importantly, the neuronal conversion of GBM cells is accompanied by significant inhibition of GBM cell proliferation in both in vitro and in vivo models. Therefore, these results suggest that GBM cells can be reprogrammed into different subtypes of neurons, leading to a potential alternative approach to treat brain tumor.Significance Converting dividing glioblastoma cells into non-dividing neurons may provide an innovative therapeutic approach to treat glioblastoma.HighlightsEfficient neuronal conversion of human glioblastoma cells achieved by overexpression of neural transcription factorsNeurog2- and NeuroD1-converted neurons are mostly glutamatergic, while Ascl1-converted neurons are mainly GABAergicTranscriptome analyses reveal the activation of neuronal genes after overexpression of neural transcription factors in glioblastoma cellsInhibition of cell proliferation during glioblastoma cell conversion both in vitro and in vivoCompeting Interest StatementG.C. is a co-founder of NeuExcell Therapeutics Inc. The remaining authors declare no conflict of interest.