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Nanotechnology offers a new horizon for cancer drug administration and systemic safety of oncological treatments. Compared with conventional pharmaceutical forms, nanoparticles (NPs) have many advantages such as larger surface, ability to adsorb and targeted delivery of different types of drugs, providing decreased side effects and a patient customed approach in cancer treatment. Due to their diverse chemical composition, NPs offer the possibility of developing innovative therapies, which may be also applied in glioblastoma treatment. Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) have been previously used in cancer treatment, as targeted drug delivery systems. Helianthin is an azo dye compound that we found to induce cell death in high grade glioma (HGG) cells. In this study, we analyzed the in vitro effect of MNPs loaded with Helianthin (HeMNPs) on a glioblastoma cell line (GB2B).

Cancer and viruses have a long history that has evolved over many decades. Much information about the interplay between viruses and cell proliferation and metabolism has come from the history of clinical cases of patients infected with virus-induced cancer. In addition, information from viruses used to treat some types of cancer is valuable. Now, since the global coronavirus pandemic erupted almost a year ago, the scientific community has invested countless time and resources to slow down the infection rate and diminish the number of casualties produced by this highly infectious pathogen. A large percentage of cancer cases diagnosed are strongly related to dysregulations of the tyrosine kinase receptor (TKR) family and its downstream signaling pathways. As such, many therapeutic agents have been developed to strategically target these structures in order to hinder certain mechanisms pertaining to the phenotypic characteristics of cancer cells such as division, invasion or metastatic potential. Interestingly, several authors have pointed out that a correlation between coronaviruses such as the SARS-CoV-1 and -2 or MERS viruses and dysregulations of signaling pathways activated by TKRs can be established. This information may help to accelerate the repurposing of clinically developed anti-TKR cancer drugs in COVID-19 management. Because the need for treatment is critical, drug repurposing may be an advantageous choice in the search for new and efficient therapeutic compounds. This approach would be advantageous from a financial point of view as well, given that the resources used for research and development would no longer be required and can be potentially redirected towards other key projects. This review aims to provide an overview of how SARS-CoV-2 interacts with different TKRs and their respective downstream signaling pathway and how several therapeutic agents targeted against these receptors can interfere with the viral infection. Additionally, this review aims to identify if SARS-CoV-2 can be repurposed to be a potential viral vector against different cancer types.

Immunotherapy holds great promise in the treatment of high grade glioma (HGG). We performed a comprehensive meta-analysis of clinical trials involving dendritic cell (DC) therapy and viral therapy (VT) for the treatment of HGG, in order to assess their clinical impact in comparison to standard treatments in terms of overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS). To our knowledge, this is the first meta-analysis to evaluate VT for the treatment of HGG, allowing comparison of different immunotherapeutic approaches. Thirteen eligible studies of 1043 cases were included in the meta-analysis. For DC vaccination, in terms of OS, both newly diagnosed patients (HR, 0.65) and patients who suffered from recurrent HGGs (HR = 0.63) presented markedly improved results compared to the control groups. PFS was also improved (HR = 0.49) but was not statistically significant (p = 0.1). A slight improvement was observed for newly diagnosed patients receiving VT in terms of OS (HR = 0.88) while PFS was inferior for patients in the experimental arm (HR = 1.16). Our results show that DC therapy greatly improves OS for patients with both newly diagnosed and recurrent HGGs. VT, however, did not provide any statistically significant improvements in terms of OS and PFS for patients with newly diagnosed HGGs.

Treatment of high grade gliomas (HGGs) has remained elusive due to their high heterogeneity and aggressiveness. Surgery followed by radiotherapy represents the mainstay of treatment for HGG. However, the unfavorable location of the tumor that usually limits total resection and the resistance to radiation therapy are the major therapeutic problems. Chemotherapy with DNA alkylating agent temozolomide is also used to treat HGG, despite modest effects on survival. Disregulation of several growth factor receptors (GFRs) were detected in HGG and receptor amplification in glioblastoma has been suggested to be responsible for heterogeneity propagation through clonal evolution. Molecularly targeted agents inhibiting these membrane proteins have demonstrated significant cytotoxicity in several types of cancer cells when tested in preclinical models. Platelet-derived growth factor receptors (PDGFRs) and associated signaling were found to be implicated in gliomagenesis, moreover, HGG commonly display a Platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) autocrine pathway that is not present in normal brain tissues. We have previously shown that both the susceptibility towards PDGFR and the impact of the PDGFR inactivation on the radiation response were different in different HGG cell lines. Therefore, we decided to extend our investigation, using two other HGG cell lines that express PDGFR at the cell surface. Here, we investigated the effect of PDGFR inhibition alone or in combination with gamma radiation in 11 and 15 HGG cell lines. Our results showed that while targeting the PDGFR represents a good means of treatment in HGG, the combination of receptor inhibition with gamma radiation did not result in any discernable difference compared to the single treatment. The PI3K/PTEN/Akt/mTOR and Ras/Raf/MEK/ERK pathways are the major signaling pathways emerging from the GFRs, including PDGFR. Decreased sensitivity to radiation-induced cell death are often associated with redundancy in these pro-survival signaling pathways. Here we found that Phosphoinositide 3-kinases (PI3K), Extracellular-signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2), or c-Jun N-terminal kinase 1/2 (JNK1/2) inactivation induced radiosensitivity in HGG cells.

A major focus of brain cancer research today is to translate understanding of glioma biology into advances in treatment, by exploring the potential of target therapy. Here we investigated the ability of three compounds belonging to the chemical class of azo dyes (methyl red, methyl yellow, and helianthin) to inhibit glioblastoma (GB) cell growth in vitro. Our results showed that helianthin induced cytotoxicity in two GB cell cultures, cell lines 18 and 38, whereas methyl red and methyl yellow were not cytotoxic. The effect of helianthin on EGFR, IGF-1R, and their common intracellular signaling via PI3-K and ERK1/2 was also analyzed. Treatment with helianthin down-regulated EGFR and IGF-1R activity in both cell lines. Helianthin treatment blocked ERK1/2 phosphorylation without affecting PI3K activity in cell line 18 and reduced both PI3K and ERK1/2 in GB 38 cell line. The cell death was accompanied by degradation of PARP without affecting BCL2 expression in both GB cell cultures. Because of the genetic heterogeneity of malignant gliomas, we tested the effect of helianthin on other two primary GB lines (11 and 15) and two early-passage GB cultures (BT1GB and BT2GB), to assess the general nature of the anti-tumor effect of the drug in GB cells. We found that helianthin treatment induced cell death in all the GB cell cultures analyzed. To our knowledge, this is the first report indicating that helianthin can reduce GB cell growth.