Genomic instability of surgical sample and cancer-initiating cell lines from human glioblastoma.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most aggressive brain tumor in the adult human, with an average survival of 16 months. A small population of cells within the GBM termed cancer-initiating cells is responsible for the initiation and maintenance of the tumor mass. The traditional glioblastoma cancer cells, grown with serum containing media, display increased rate of genomic instability events, which in turn renders the cell cultures with little resembling to the original tumor, making doubtful their use as preclinical models for screening therapeutic agents. On the contrary, the cancer-initiating cells grown in serum-free media seems to show lower rate of genomic instability processes. However, considering the diversity of genetic and/or epigenetic background, we will need to evaluate the possibility of using different culture conditions to allow for the isolation and culture of such cancer-initiating cells diversity, keeping, at the same time, the genomic instability rate as the original tumor. We summarized the main genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that are driving genomic instability in cancer-initiating cells from human glioblastoma.