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Glioblastoma (GBM), a highly malignant brain tumor of adults and children, diffusely invades within the non-neoplastic brain. Despite aggressive current therapeutic interventions, improved therapeutic strategies are greatly needed. Interactions between the tumor and constituents of its microenvironment are known to regulate malignancy, and heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs) are important as they bind diverse extracellular proteins, including growth factors and cell adhesion molecules, regulating the activity of several ligand-mediated signaling pathways. Recent work from our group described a mechanism by which GBM regulates PDGFR-alpha signaling via enzymatic alteration of heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs) in the extracellular microenvironment. Blocking tumor-induced alterations of HSPGs, which can be achieved by pharmacological strategies, would potentially inhibit multiple oncogenic signaling pathways in tumor cells and disrupt critical tumormicroenvironment interactions. Here we examine HSPGs and the enzymes that modify them in GBM. We compare their expression across tumor subtypes, their potential roles in oncogenesis, and their potential as novel therapeutic targets in GBM.
Pubmed ID: 22643827
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Project exploring the spectrum of genomic changes involved in more than 20 types of human cancer that provides a platform for researchers to search, download, and analyze data sets generated. As a pilot project it confirmed that an atlas of changes could be created for specific cancer types. It also showed that a national network of research and technology teams working on distinct but related projects could pool the results of their efforts, create an economy of scale and develop an infrastructure for making the data publicly accessible. Its success committed resources to collect and characterize more than 20 additional tumor types. Components of the TCGA Research Network: * Biospecimen Core Resource (BCR); Tissue samples are carefully cataloged, processed, checked for quality and stored, complete with important medical information about the patient. * Genome Characterization Centers (GCCs); Several technologies will be used to analyze genomic changes involved in cancer. The genomic changes that are identified will be further studied by the Genome Sequencing Centers. * Genome Sequencing Centers (GSCs); High-throughput Genome Sequencing Centers will identify the changes in DNA sequences that are associated with specific types of cancer. * Proteome Characterization Centers (PCCs); The centers, a component of NCI's Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium, will ascertain and analyze the total proteomic content of a subset of TCGA samples. * Data Coordinating Center (DCC); The information that is generated by TCGA will be centrally managed at the DCC and entered into the TCGA Data Portal and Cancer Genomics Hub as it becomes available. Centralization of data facilitates data transfer between the network and the research community, and makes data analysis more efficient. The DCC manages the TCGA Data Portal. * Cancer Genomics Hub (CGHub); Lower level sequence data will be deposited into a secure repository. This database stores cancer genome sequences and alignments. * Genome Data Analysis Centers (GDACs) - Immense amounts of data from array and second-generation sequencing technologies must be integrated across thousands of samples. These centers will provide novel informatics tools to the entire research community to facilitate broader use of TCGA data. TCGA is actively developing a network of collaborators who are able to provide samples that are collected retrospectively (tissues that had already been collected and stored) or prospectively (tissues that will be collected in the future).
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