Abstract
Tumour neovascularization in glioblastoma (GBM) is abundant, abnormal and poorly understood, and it likely involves multiple co-existing mechnanisms with distinct modes of regulation. Since glioma stem cells (GSCs) engage in bidirectional interactions with the vasculature we dissected the resulting vascular responses elicited by either proneural (PN), or mesenchymal (MES) GSC subtypes established from patients isolates and able to drive progression of orthotopic intracranial xenografts in mice. We report here that while PN-GSCs elicited mostly angiogenesis-type vascular capillary growth processes, their MES-GSC counterparts elicited non-angiogenic growth of enlarged vessels (vasectesia), paradoxically associated with reduced blood vessel density. Vasectasia was dependent on the expression of oncogenic EGFR/EGFRvIII by MES-GSCs, and on the related kinase/signalling activity, as EGFR/EGFRvIII gene disruption and Dacomitinib treatment suppressed formation of large blood vessels in vivo and resulted in a preponderance of a small calliber (angiogenic) vasculature throughout xenografts. Notably, the analysis of spatial transcriptomes and single cell RNA sequencing revealed distinct molecular traits of endothelial cells asociated with vasectasia and angiogesis, the former enriched in Birc5, but depleted for angiogenic tip cell markers (Vegfr2, Apln). Mechnaistically, vasectasia was linked to the intercellular transfer of EGFR from MES-GSCs to endothelial cells resulting in ectopic activation of EGFR signalling in the endothelial cell bacground, both in vitro and in a model of in vivo blood vessel recruitment into implanted matrigel pellets. Simultaneous pharmacological blockade of both, angiogenesis (anti-VEGR2) and vasectasia (Dacomitinib) lead to a marked increase in survival of mice with aggressive GBM lesions initiated by MES-GSCs. We suggest that, vasectasia driven by intercellular transfer of oncogenic EGFR may represent a new, subtype-specific mechanism of GBM neovascularization, and a plausible target for agents aiming to modify vascular tumour microenvironment.