Hrvo­je Miletic

Cell com­mu­ni­ca­tion and mito­chon­dria trans­fer in brain tumors

Abstract

Glioblas­toma (GBM) is one of the most aggres­sive pri­ma­ry brain tumors with a bleak prog­no­sis. The dis­ease is char­ac­ter­ized by dif­fuse­ly infil­trat­ing tumor cells con­tribut­ing to treat­ment resis­tance. In the past ten years, new com­mu­ni­ca­tion avenues have been dis­cov­ered in GBM such as micro­tubes and neu­roglioma synaps­es. Micro­tubes are cyto­plas­mic exten­sions that con­nect tumor cells to a func­tion­al and treat­ment-resis­tant net­work. The net­work com­mu­ni­cates through gap junc­tions and trans­fer of small mol­e­cules such as Calcium.

Recent­ly we showed that mito­chon­dria can be exchanged through this net­work which means that com­mu­ni­ca­tion goes beyond gap junc­tions and that the micro­tube con­nec­tions at least in part must be open con­nec­tions. We demon­strat­ed that mito­chon­dria are shut­tled from astro­cytes to tumor cells lead­ing to increased oxida­tive metab­o­lism and tumor growth. With this work we demon­strat­ed that the micro­tube net­work is extend­ing beyond tumor cells to stro­mal cells such as astro­cytes. In this pre­sen­ta­tion, I will dis­cuss mech­a­nisms of micro­tube for­ma­tion and mito­chon­dria transfer.

Biography/​Link

https://​www​.uib​.no/​e​n​/​p​e​r​s​o​n​s​/​H​r​v​o​j​e​.​M​i​l​e​tic