Because fibulin-3 is produced de novo in these tumors and is absent from the normal brain, we propose that targeting the fibulin-3/NF-κB axis may provide a novel avenue to disrupt oncogenic NF-κB signaling in combination therapies for malignant brain tumors.
Overall, the data suggest that the orthotopic environment of the brain tumor supports EFEMP1 in carrying out both its anti-EGFR and pro-invasive/cancer stem cell-transforming functions in the two glioma cell subpopulations during formation of a single tumor, where EFEMP1 stabilizes the subpopulation equilibrium in response to alterations of the growth environment.