Researchers from UMC Utrecht and Delft University of Technology received an NWO Open Competition grant for the CYTOVADE project, which investigates why glioblastoma cells infiltrate the brain so effectively. The project integrates brain biology and cell biophysics to examine how the cell’s internal skeleton drives this process. The team includes Elly Hol and Emma van Bodegraven (UMC Utrecht) and Gijsje Koenderink and Pouyan Boukany (TU Delft).
Glioblastoma is a lethal form of brain cancer in which tumor cells penetrate deep into the brain. This enables the tumor cells to evade treatment, making the disease difficult to cure. Understanding what drives this invasive behavior remains one of cancer research’s most urgent questions.
Recent work has identified that intermediate filament (IF) proteins have a critical role in the invasiveness of glioblastoma. IF proteins form part of the cytoskeleton: the cell’s internal structural network that also facilitates cell migration.
Each cell type expresses a distinct combination of IF proteins, termed the “IF code.” The team of researchers previously demonstrated that invasive glioblastoma cells carry a unique IF code promoting brain infiltration. In CYTOVADE, they aim to determine exactly how this works.
To answer this question, the researchers bring together expertise in brain biology and cell biophysics. They will use microscopy to track glioblastoma cells with different IF codes in both laboratory models of brain tissue and actual brain samples. This approach may reveal how IF code composition drives invasion and could identify the underlying biochemical mechanisms.
In the long term, this research could open the way to treatments that block the spread of tumor cells without harming healthy cells. Moreover, the research addresses a fundamental question about how the composition of IF proteins steers cell-type-specific functions during health and disease.
Watch how Elly Hol and her team investigate glioblastoma infiltration (with English subtitles)
CYTOVADE is a collaboration between UMC Utrecht (Elly Hol and Emma van Bodegraven) and Delft University of Technology (Gijsje Koenderink and Pouyan Boukany). The project is funded through the NWO Open Competition Domain Science-M, which supports curiosity-driven fundamental research across the natural sciences, computer science, and life sciences.
