A molecular view of the radioresistance of gliomas

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

// Xuetao Han 1 , Xiaoying Xue 1 , Huandi Zhou 1 and Ge Zhang 1 1 Department of Radiotherapy, The Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China Correspondence to: Xiaoying Xue, email: xxy0636@163.com Keywords: glioma, radioresistance, signaling pathway, microRNA, glioma stem cells Received: March 08, 2017      Accepted: September 25, 2017      Published: October 11, 2017 ABSTRACT Gliomas originate from glial cells and are the most frequent primary brain tumors. High-grade gliomas occur ~4 times more frequently than low-grade gliomas, are highly malignant, and have extremely poor prognosis. Radiotherapy, sometimes combined with chemotherapy, is considered the treatment of choice for gliomas and is used after resective surgery. Despite great technological improvements, the radiotherapeutic effect is generally limited, due to the marked radioresistance exhibited by gliomas cells, especially glioma stem cells (GSCs). The mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are multiple and remain to be fully elucidated. This review attempts to summarize current knowledge on the molecular basis of glioma radioresistance by focusing on signaling pathways, microRNAs, hypoxia, the brain microenvironment, and GSCs. A thorough understanding of the complex interactions between molecular, cellular, and environmental factors should provide new insight into the intrinsic radioresistance of gliomas, potentially enabling improvement, through novel concurrent therapies, of the clinical efficacy of radiotherapy.