Targeting human brain cancer stem cells by curcumin-loaded nanoparticles grafted with anti-aldehyde dehydrogenase and sialic acid: Colocalization of ALDH and CD44.
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is one of the most malignant and aggressive brain tumors with great amount of hyaluronan (HA) secretion and CD44 overexpression (HA receptor).
These brain tumor-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BT-MSCs) are defined with the phenotype (Lin-Sca-1+CD9+CD44+CD166+/-) and have multipotent differentiation capacity.
The results demonstrate the presence of CD44s epitopes and of CD44 splice variants containing CD44v4, v5 and v10 sequences in various types of brain tumors.
In the present study, CD44 isoform expression was evaluated by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis in frozen sections derived from three samples of normal brain tissue and from 40 brain tumors, including samples of glioblastoma multiforme, anaplastic astrocytoma, low-grade astrocytoma, cerebral primitive neuroectodermal tumor, medulloblastoma, metastatic colon carcinoma, and metastatic melanoma.
CD44 expression was also detected by flow cytometric analysis on cultured cells derived from a variety of human brain tumours including glioblastomas and meningiomas.