You’re invited to join the Department of Brain Sciences and UK Dementia Research Institute at Imperial for a seminar with Professor Brian Bigger (University of Manchester).
The meeting will be hosted via Zoom (Meeting ID: 935 2502 1490, Passcode: ap863k)
If you would like to (virtually) meet the speaker on the day, please contact h.abdeen@imperial.ac.uk.
Abstract
Despite aggressive multimodal treatment, glioblastoma remains lethal, with inevitable recurrence and limited second line treatment options. In order to identify novel second line treatments, we developed a system of high-throughput screening in multicellular spheroids derived from 12 patient-derived glioma stem cell lines. We identified several cytotoxic candidates from a panel of 133 FDA approved anticancer compounds, of which actinomycin D was the most consistent across all cell lines. We subsequently validated the action of actinomycin D in patient-derived xenograft models of flank and orthotopic tumours in primary and recurrent glioblastoma. We finally demonstrate that actinomycin D works by downregulating Sox-2 (a transcription factor associated with stem cell function), thus identifying a potential drug and mechanism for treating recurrent glioblastoma