Like the anti-angiogenic strategy, anti-vascular mimicry is considered as a novel targeting strategy for glioma. In the present study, we used NGR as a targeting ligand and prepared NGR-modified liposomes containing combretastatin A4 (NGR-SSL-CA4) in order to evaluate their potential targeting of glioma tumor cells and vasculogenic mimicry (VM) formed by glioma cells as well as their anti-VM ac...

MicroRNAs regulate self renewal and differentiation of cancer stem cells. There, we sought to identify the expression of miR-181b in glioma stem cells and investigate the biological effect of miR-181b on glioma stem cells in this study. MiR-181b expression was measured by real-time PCR in glioma stem cells isolated from U87 cells by FACS sorting. After miR-181b was overexpressed in U87 glioma s...

The generation of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs) offers tremendous opportunities for cell replacement therapy in demyelinating diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and spinal cord injury. Recently, the prospect of reprogramming terminally differentiated adult cells towards another mature somatic cell or progenitor cells without an intermediate pluripotent state has been of interest...

The generation of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs) offers tremendous opportunities for cell replacement therapy in demyelinating diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and spinal cord injury. Recently, the prospect of reprogramming terminally differentiated adult cells towards another mature somatic cell or progenitor cells without an intermediate pluripotent state has been of interest...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the role of 188Re in human sodium iodide symporter (hNIS) theranostic gene-mediated human glioma imaging and therapy in model mice. METHODS The human glioma cell line U87 was transfected with recombinant lentivirus encoding the hNIS gene under the control of cytomegalovirus promoter (U87-hNIS). The uptake and efflux of 188Re were determined after incubating the cells ...

Background: Pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) are the main sensors of pathogen and danger signals in innate immunity of which Toll Like Receptors (TLRs) are the most studied ones. The contribution of PRRs in cerebral inflammation induced by microbial infection, tissue damage and cancer has not extensively been addressed so far. Glioma is the most common tumor of the central nervous system an...

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is popularly known as insecticidal bacterium. However, non-insecticidal Bt strains are more extensively available in natural environment than the insecticidal ones. Parasporin (PS) is a collection of genealogically heterogeneous Cry proteins synthesized in non-insecticidal isolates of Bt. An important character generally related with PS proteins is their strong cytoc...

Glioblastomas are highly vascular malignant brain tumors that often overexpress vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). They also frequently overexpress epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and contain regions of hypoxia, both conditions that can induce VEGF. We examined VEGF regulation in U87 MG human glioblastoma cells and in U87/T691 cells, a clonal derivative that contains a truncated...

N1,N11-diethylnorspermine (DENSPM), a polyamine analog that induces expression of spermidine/spermine N1-acetyltransferase (SSAT) and reduces polyamine levels in eukaryotic cells, has demonstrated anticancer effects in many cancer cell types. Gene expression of SSAT after treatment with DENSPM was measured in both U87 and LN229 cells using real-ti...