成胶质细胞瘤是恶性脑癌，由一个大范围的血管网络提供营养。现在，两个小组发现，成胶质细胞瘤细胞可以分化成作为肿瘤血管构成部分的功能性内皮细胞。这些内皮细胞以与成胶质细胞瘤细胞有同样基因改变为特征，并且好像是从“成胶质细胞瘤干样细胞”形成的。这项工作表明一些假设的癌症干细胞可以直接和间接促进癌症生长，并且还可解释为什么某些抗血管生成类抗癌药物没有疗效，同时也可帮助设计新疗法。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原文出处：
Nature doi:10.1038/nature09557
Tumour vascularization via endothelial differentiation of glioblastoma stem-like cells
Lucia Ricci-Vitiani,Roberto Pallini,Mauro Biffoni,Matilde Todaro,Gloria Invernici,Tonia Cenci,Giulio Maira,Eugenio Agostino Parati,Giorgio Stassi,Luigi Maria Larocca& Ruggero De Maria
Glioblastoma is a highly angiogenetic malignancy, the neoformed vessels of which are thought to arise by sprouting of pre-existing brain capillaries. The recent demonstration that a population of glioblastoma stem-like cells (GSCs) maintains glioblastomas1, 2 indicates that the progeny of these cells may not be confined to the neural lineage3. Normal neural stem cells are able to differentiate into functional endothelial cells4. The connection between neural stem cells and the endothelial compartment seems to be critical in glioblastoma, where cancer stem cells closely interact with the vascular niche and promote angiogenesis through the release of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and stromal-derived factor 1 (refs 5–9). Here we show that a variable number (range 20–90%, mean 60.7%) of endothelial cells in glioblastoma carry the same genomic alteration as tumour cells, indicating that a significant portion of the vascular endothelium has a neoplastic origin. The vascular endothelium contained a subset of tumorigenic cells that produced highly vascularized anaplastic tumours with areas of vasculogenic mimicry in immunocompromised mice. In vitro culture of GSCs in endothelial conditions generated progeny with phenotypic and functional features of endothelial cells. Likewise, orthotopic or subcutaneous injection of GSCs in immunocompromised mice produced tumour xenografts, the vessels of which were primarily composed of human endothelial cells. Selective targeting of endothelial cells generated by GSCs in mouse xenografts resulted in tumour reduction and degeneration, indicating the functional relevance of the GSC-derived endothelial vessels. These findings describe a new mechanism for tumour vasculogenesis and may explain the presence of cancer-derived endothelial-like cells in several malignancies.
