TRPC channels and glioma

Abstract

Glioma is the most common type of brain tumors and malignant glioma is extremely lethal, with patients’ 5-year survival rate less than 10%. Treatment of gliomas poses remarkable clinical challenges, not only because of their particular localization but also because glioma cells possess several malignant biological features, including highly proliferative, highly invasive, highly angiogenic, and highly metabolic aberrant. All these features make gliomas highly recurrent and drug resistant. Finding new and effective molecular drug targets for glioma is an urgent and critical task for both basic and clinical research. Recent studies have proposed a type of non-voltage-gated calcium channels, namely, canonical transient receptor potential (TRPC) channels, to be newly emerged potential drug targets for glioma. They are heavily involved in the proliferation, migration, invasion, angiogenesis, and metabolism of glioma cells. Abundant evidence from both cell models and preclinical mouse models has demonstrated that inhibition of TRPC channels shows promising anti-glioma effect. In this chapter, we will give a comprehensive review on the current progress in the studies on TRPC channels and glioma and discuss their potential clinical implication in glioma therapy.