Dataset Information

Insights into selective action of microsecond pulsed electric fields on healthy and cancer stem cells (D283)

ABSTRACT: In the last few years, pulsed electric fields have emerged as promising clinical tools for tumor treatments. This study highlights the distinct impact of a specific pulsed electric field protocol named PEF-5 (0.3 MV/m, 40 µs, 5 pulses) on astrocytes (NHA), medulloblastoma (D283) and gli-oblastoma (U87 NS) cancer stem-like cells. We pursued this goal performing ultrastructural analyses corroborated by molecular/omics approaches to understand the vulnerability or re-sistance mechanisms triggered by PEF-5 exposure in the different cell types. Electron microscopic analyses showed that, independently of exposed cells, the main targets of PEF-5 were the cell membrane and the cytoskeleton, presenting indiscriminate filopodia disappearance on the cell surface accompanied by a rapid cell swelling. Nevertheless, cells activated different responses stemming from intracellular organelles. NHA triggered a protective mechanism to recover from the damaged membranes and eliminated the detrimental ROS to maintain cell vital functions. Conversely, PEF-5 induced a different action on mitochondria of cancer stem-like cells, more prominent on D283 compared to U87 NS cells, in correlation with a higher basal level of CD133 protein in D283 cells. In this case, a complete mitochondrial dysfunction was demonstrated, inhibiting the recovery of D283 vital processes, while a mild perturbation was observed in mito-chondria of U87 NS cells, not sufficient to impair their cell functions. Altogether, these results suggest the possibility to use PEF-based technology as a novel strategy to target selectively mi-tochondria of CSCs, preserving healthy cells. Ultrastructural analysis, supported by transcriptomic characterization in microsecond pulsed electric field exposed normal brain and brain tumor cells.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE248599 | GEO | 2024/03/06

REPOSITORIES: GEO

ACCESS DATA

Dataset's files

Source:

			Action	DRS
		Other

Items per page:

1 - 1 of 1

Similar Datasets

Project description:Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), is the most common form of adult malignant brain tumor, highly heterogeneous and relatively resistant to therapy with a poor prognosis. As other cancers, GBM starts from a relatively small fraction of poorly differentiated and particularly aggressive cancer stem cells (CSCs), responsible for aberrant proliferation and invasion, rapidly spreading the tumor growth in the other parts of the central nervous system. Due to the extreme tumor heterogeneity, standard therapies (i.e., surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy) provide poor positive outcomes and cancers usually recur. Therefore, alternative approaches, possibly targeting CSCs, are necessary for searching effective therapeutic strategies against GBM. Among many emerging new therapeutic strategies, ultra-short pulsed electric fields (PEF) are considered extremely promising in cancer therapy and our previous results demonstrated the capability of a specific electric pulse protocol, characterized by a high pulse amplitude and a short duration, to selectively affect medulloblastoma CSCs preserving normal cells. Here, we tested the same exposure protocol to investigate the response of U87 GBM cells, and of U87-derived neurospheres. By analyzing different in vitro biological endpoints and taking advantage of transcriptomic and bioinformatics analyses, we found that, independently of CSCs content, PEF exposure affected cell proliferation and differentially regulated hypoxia, inflammation and P53/cell cycle checkpoints. PEF exposure also significantly reduced the clonogenic potential, reducing the ability to form new neurospheres, and inhibited the invasion potential. Importantly, exclusively in U87 neurospheres, PEF exposure changed the expression of stemness/differentiation genes. Our results, confirm this physical stimulus as a promising treatment to destabilize the extreme intra-tumoral GBM heterogeneity opening up the possibility to develop future therapeutic strategies mediated by PEF exposure.

Project description:In this project we aimed at deciphering modulation in genes expression induced by external pulsed electric fields applied in reversible electroporation-based treatments. Thanks to their local application and transient effects, physical stimuli appear as attractive tools to remodel extracellular matrix, which was the point of interest in our to be published study. We assessed the potential of pulsed electric field technology, classically applied to drug delivery, to induce collagen remodeling at the tissue scale. A sophisticated in vitro tissue-engineered human dermal substitute, a tissue model rich in endogeneous extracellular matrix such as collagens, was used to demonstrate the effects of microsecond and millisecond pulsed electric fields applied respectively in electrochemotherapy (ECT) treatment and gene electrotransfer (GET) strategy. Our analyses, focused on matrisome genes and extracellular matrix remodeling, underpin that pulsed electric fields, a technology already approved for clinical use combined with anti-cancer agents, are particularly promising to provide local and effective treatment of abnormal extracellular matrix. Part of this dataset was used to describe how pulsed electric field on its own (with no addition of external drugs) induce extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling at human dermal scale, by focusing at genes related to matrisome subset. In this manuscript to be published, electrochemotherapy (ECT) parameters were named SP for "short pulses" and gene electrotransfer (GET) parameters were named LP for "long pulses". W demonstrated that these both types of electric parameters inducing reversible electroporation of the cells whitin the dermal tissue substitute induced 1) a rapid modulation (4h after electrostimulation) of mRNA’s genes composing the matrisome, particularly a down-regulation of pro-collagens and ECM maturation’s enzymes such as transglutaminase TG2 and LOX-like; 2) a transient decrease in pro-collagens production and hydroxyproline tissue content within a week after electrostimulation; 3) a long-lasting ROS-dependent over-activation of MMPs for at least 48h and 4) a down-regulation at both mRNA and protein level of pro-fibrotic TGF-β.

Dataset Information

Insights into selective action of microsecond pulsed electric fields on healthy and cancer stem cells (D283)

Dataset's files

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets