title: Brain tumor stem cell dancing.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Issues regarding cancer stem cell (CSC) movement are important in neurosphere biology as cell-cell or cell-environment interactions may have significant impacts on CSC differentiation and contribute to the heterogeneity of the neurosphere.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Despite the growing body of literature data on the biology of brain tumor stem cells, floating CSC-derived neurospheres have been scarcely characterized from a morphological and ultrastructural point of view.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Here we report a morphological and ultrastructural characterization performed by live imaging and scanning electron microscopy. Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) CSC-derived neurospheres are heterogeneous and are constituted by cells, morphologically different, capable of forming highly dynamic structures. These dynamic structures are regulated by not serendipitous cell-cell interactions, and they synchronously pulsate following a cyclic course made of "fast" and "slow" alternate phases. Autocrine/paracrine non canonical Wnt signalling appears to be correlated with the association status of neurospheres.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results obtained suggest that GBM CSCs can behave both as independents cells and as "social" cells, highly interactive with other members of its species, giving rise to a sort of "multicellular organism".
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Tecnologie e Salute, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy. Email: giuseppina.bozzuto@iss.it.
authors.forename: Giuseppina
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bozzuto
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Toccacieli
authors.forename: Stefania
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mazzoleni
authors.forename: Gianluca
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Frustagli
authors.forename: Pietro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Chistolini
authors.forename: Rossella
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Galli
authors.forename: Agnese
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Molinari
mesh_terms: D002450:Cell Communication; D002465:Cell Movement; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D005909:Glioblastoma / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D014411:Neoplastic Stem Cells / Q000502:physiology*