Overall, the data suggest that the orthotopic environment of the brain tumor supports EFEMP1 in carrying out both its anti-EGFR and pro-invasive/cancer stem cell-transforming functions in the two glioma cell subpopulations during formation of a single tumor, where EFEMP1 stabilizes the subpopulation equilibrium in response to alterations of the growth environment.
The authors genotyped 14 common tagging SNPs of EFEMP1 gene via the Sequenom Mass ARRYiPLEX platform and assessed their association with glioma risk in a hospital-based case-control study in a Chinese Han population (979 cases and 1007 controls).
Overexpression and knockdown experiments revealed that fibulin-3 did not seem to affect glioma cell morphology or proliferation, but enhanced substrate-specific cell adhesion and promoted cell motility and dispersion in organotypic cultures.