Like a hurricane: a journey with Tamara into the glioma stem cell niche

Tamara and I work together for more than 25 years. The role of proteases in health and disease was our first joint interest and that is still the case today. However, the role of proteases has been narrowed down to their functions in primary brain tumors, glioblastoma, 5-10 years ago and was even further narrowed down a few years ago to the cancer stem cells and their niches in glioblastoma, the glioma stem cell niches. Tamara and I have decided to investigate these niches together with Urška Verbovšek and Barbara Breznik from the NIB and Vashendriya Hira from the AMC, Amsterdam. We focus on the niches because we want to know what molecules keep the glioma stem cells in their niches and what molecules make these niches glioma stem cell niches. Proteases are involved besides other proteins and we want to know how. This is important for our ultimate goal: chase the glioma stem cells out of their niches to let them differentiate to glioma cells and then attack them with anti-cancer therapies. The glioma stem cells are restistant against therapy and it is likely that the niches protect the glioma stem cells. So, Barbara, Vashendriya and I are running behind hurricane Tamara and we dive into the niches to unravel their secrets and make the glioma stem cells vulnerable to therapy.