The pathological structure of the perivascular niche in different microvascular patterns of glioblastoma

Abstract

The perivascular niche is critical for intercellular communication between resident cell types in glioblastoma (GBM), and it plays a vital role in maintaining the glioma stem cell (GSC) microenvironment. It is shown in abundant research that different microvascular patterns exist in GBM; and it can be implied that different microvascular patterns are associated with different pathological structures in the perivascular niche. However, the pathological structure of the perivascular niche is still not clear. Here, we investigated the distribution and biological characteristics of different microvascular pattern niches (MVPNs) in GBM by detecting the expression of CD34, CD133, Nestin, α-SMA, GFAP and CD14 in the perivascular niche using multiple -fluorescence. The four basic microvascular patterns are microvascular sprouting (MS), vascular cluster (VC), vascular garland (VG), and glomeruloid vascular proliferation (GVP). By analyzing the proportion of the area of each marker in four types of formations, the results indicated that the expression of CD34, CD133 and Nestin in MS and VC was significantly lower than that in VG and GVP (P<0.05). Furthermore, the results showed that α-SMA expression different in the MS, VC, VG and GVP (P<0.05). However, the expression of GFAP and CD14 in each type of formation exhibited no significant difference (P>0.05). According to the area distributions of different markers, we mapped four precise simulation diagrams to provide an effective foundation for the accurate simulation of glioblastoma in vitro.