Migration of human glioma cells in response to tumour cyst fluids

Abstract

Glial tumours often show high degrees of local invasion that lead to local recurrence of the disease. Extracellular matrix components as well as soluble factors may play a critical role in this poorly understood process. Cyst fluid from human brain tumours may accumulate such autocrine produced factors and may represent a source were those factors may be easily obtained and studied. We have studied the effect of cyst fluids harvested from 17 glial tumours, 3 meningiomas, and three metastases on the motility of established human glioma cell lines. Both cyst fluids of high grade and low grade gliomas contained varying degrees of motility enhancing activity. No such activity was identified in cyst fluids obtained from meningiomas. The relation of mitogenic and motogenic activity in three selected cyst fluids was analysed using a quantitative monolayer migration assay. Quantitative analysis of cyst fluid effects on both proliferation and migration indicate that tumour cyst fluids contain factors that strongly stimulate cell migration and that maximum stimulation of migration did not occur at concentrations optimal for cell proliferation. Our findings indicate that glial tumours in fact produce and secrete soluble factors that may contribute to their dissemination in brain tissue.

Treatment of malignant glioma: a problem beyond the margins of resection

“…Several experimental systems have demonstrated that there may be an inverse correlation between cell motility and the proliferation of a cell population. Glioma cells, when stimulated to migrate by permissive matrix substrates or soluble motility factors, show a temporarily lowered proliferation rate (Giese et al 1996a;Giese et al 1996b). Control of motility is tightly controlled by matrix adhesion (Giese et al 1994;Giese et al 1995;Giese et al 1996b;Palacek et al 1997).…”