Stem cells: Tumour stem cells generate vasculature.

摘要

Glioblastoma is a highly angiogenic tumour and, although it is known that neural stem cells closely interact with the vascular niche, the origins of the endothelial cells in this malignancy are poorly understood. Two new papers show that stem-like cells in the tumour can differentiate into endothelial cells, thereby generating the tumour vasculature. Both Wang et al. and Ricci-Vitiani et al. began by examining the angiogenic endothelium in glioblastoma tissue from patients, using a range of endothelial and glioblastoma markers. Both groups found that a proportion of the endothelial cells had the same genomic alterations as the tumour cells, indicating that they were of neoplastic origin.