Tumor-homing cytotoxic human induced neural stem cells for cancer therapy.

ABSTRACT: Engineered neural stem cells (NSCs) are a promising approach to treating glioblastoma (GBM). The ideal NSC drug carrier for clinical use should be easily isolated and autologous to avoid immune rejection. We transdifferentiated (TD) human fibroblasts into tumor-homing early-stage induced NSCs (h-iNSC^TE), engineered them to express optical reporters and different therapeutic gene products, and assessed the tumor-homing migration and therapeutic efficacy of cytotoxic h-iNSC^TE in patient-derived GBM models of surgical and nonsurgical disease. Molecular and functional analysis revealed that our single-factor SOX2 TD strategy converted human skin fibroblasts into h-iNSC^TE that were nestin⁺ and expressed pathways associated with tumor-homing migration

SUBMITTER: Bago JR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6719790 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature