Compensatory cross-talk between autophagy and glycolysis regulates senescence and stemness in heterogeneous glioblastoma tumor subpopulations
dc.contributor.author | Martell, Emma | |
dc.contributor.author | Kuzmychova, Helgi | |
dc.contributor.author | Subramanian, Senthil K. | |
dc.contributor.author | Kaul, Dr. Esha | |
dc.contributor.author | Chokshi, Chirayu | |
dc.contributor.author | Venugopal, Chitra | |
dc.contributor.author | Anderson, Christopher M. | |
dc.contributor.author | Singh, Sheila | |
dc.contributor.author | Sharif, Tanveer | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2023-11-14T17:11:25Z | |
dc.date.available | 2023-11-14T17:11:25Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2023-07-07 | |
dc.date.updated | 2023-11-03T09:18:27Z | |
dc.description.abstract | Abstract Despite tremendous research efforts, successful targeting of aberrant tumor metabolism in clinical practice has remained elusive. Tumor heterogeneity and plasticity may play a role in the clinical failure of metabolism-targeting interventions for treating cancer patients. Moreover, compensatory growth-related processes and adaptive responses exhibited by heterogeneous tumor subpopulations to metabolic inhibitors are poorly understood. Here, by using clinically-relevant patient-derived glioblastoma (GBM) cell models, we explore the cross-talk between glycolysis, autophagy, and senescence in maintaining tumor stemness. We found that stem cell-like GBM tumor subpopulations possessed higher basal levels of glycolytic activity and increased expression of several glycolysis-related enzymes including, GLUT1/SLC2A1, PFKP, ALDOA, GAPDH, ENO1, PKM2, and LDH, compared to their non-stem-like counterparts. Importantly, bioinformatics analysis also revealed that the mRNA expression of glycolytic enzymes positively correlates with stemness markers (CD133/PROM1 and SOX2) in patient GBM tumors. While treatment with glycolysis inhibitors induced senescence in stem cell-like GBM tumor subpopulations, as evidenced by increased β-galactosidase staining and upregulation of the cell cycle regulators p21Waf1/Cip1/CDKN1A and p16INK4A/CDKN2A, these cells maintained their aggressive stemness features and failed to undergo apoptotic cell death. Using various techniques including autophagy flux and EGFP-MAP1LC3B+ puncta formation analysis, we determined that inhibition of glycolysis led to the induction of autophagy in stem cell-like GBM tumor subpopulations, but not in their non-stem-like counterparts. Similarly, blocking autophagy in stem cell-like GBM tumor subpopulations induced senescence-associated growth arrest without hampering stemness capacity or inducing apoptosis while reciprocally upregulating glycolytic activity. Combinatorial treatment of stem cell-like GBM tumor subpopulations with autophagy and glycolysis inhibitors blocked the induction of senescence while drastically impairing their stemness capacity which drove cells towards apoptotic cell death. These findings identify a novel and complex compensatory interplay between glycolysis, autophagy, and senescence that helps maintain stemness in heterogeneous GBM tumor subpopulations and provides a survival advantage during metabolic stress. | |
dc.identifier.citation | Acta Neuropathologica Communications. 2023 Jul 07;11(1):110 | |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1186/s40478-023-01604-y | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1993/37778 | |
dc.language.iso | eng | |
dc.language.rfc3066 | en | |
dc.publisher | BMC | |
dc.rights | open access | en_US |
dc.rights.holder | Crown | |
dc.subject | Glioblastoma | |
dc.subject | Tumor heterogeneity | |
dc.subject | Cancer stem cell-like cells | |
dc.subject | Metabolism | |
dc.subject | Glycolysis | |
dc.subject | Autophagy | |
dc.subject | Senescence | |
dc.title | Compensatory cross-talk between autophagy and glycolysis regulates senescence and stemness in heterogeneous glioblastoma tumor subpopulations | |
dc.type | Journal Article | |
local.author.affiliation | Rady Faculty of Health Sciences::Max Rady College of Medicine::Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics | |
oaire.citation.issue | 110 | |
oaire.citation.title | Acta Neuropathologica Communications | |
oaire.citation.volume | 11 | |
project.funder.identifier | https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000038 | |
project.funder.name | Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada |