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Hernando Lopez-Bertoni: Exploring the Immunosuppressive Nature of GBM Cells
Apr 26, 2025, 21:41

Hernando Lopez-Bertoni: Exploring the Immunosuppressive Nature of GBM Cells

Hernando Lopez-Bertoni, Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins Medicine, shared the following insightful post on LinkedIn about a recent paper by Amanda L. Johnson et al. MDPI:

“We are very excited to share our most recent work spearheaded by Dr. Amanda Johnson exploring the immunosuppressive nature of GBM cells.
GBM is an aggressive brain tumor in adults characterized by a highly immunosuppressive tumor micro-environment. Despite this knowledge, what drives this phenotype and what aspects are amenable to therapeutic intervention remains unknown.
Using an approach combining bioinformatics analyses of clinical and experimental datasets, single-cell sequencing, and molecular manipulation of patient-derived cells we identified a novel immunosuppressive mechanism by which subsets of stem-like cells, or GSCs, expressing high levels of TGFBR2 resemble regulatory T cells (Tregs) at the transcriptional level.
We show that this immunosuppressive Treg-like (ITL) GSC state is specific to the mesenchymal GSC subset and is driven specifically by TGFBR2. This work provides novel insights into currently unrecognized tumor cell-intrinsic immunosuppressive mechanisms and provides the conceptual foundations for new combinatorial approaches to enhance the efficacy of immunotherapies.”

Regulatory T Cell Mimicry by a Subset of Mesenchymal GBM Stem Cells Suppresses CD4 and CD8 Cells

Authors: Amanda L. Johnson et al.

Hernando Lopez-Bertoni