PPARα Antagonist AA452 Triggers Metabolic Reprogramming and Increases Sensitivity to Radiation Therapy in Human Glioblastoma Primary Cells

Glioblastoma is the most-common cancer in the brain and with an increasing incidence. Despite major advances in the field, there is no curative therapy for GB to date. Many solid tumors, including GB, experienced metabolic reprogramming in order to sustain uncontrolled proliferation, hypoxic conditions and angiogenesis. PPARs, member of the steroid hormone receptor superfamily, are particularly involved in the control of energetic metabolism, particularly lipid metabolism, which has been reported deregulated in gliomas. PPARα was previously indicated by us as a potential therapeutic target for this neoplasm, due to the malignancy grade dependency of its expression, being particularly abundant in GB. In this work we used a new PPARα antagonist on patient-derived GB primary cells with particular focus on the effects on lipid metabolism and response to radiotherapy. The results obtained demonstrated that blocking PPARα results in cell death induction, increase of radiosensitivity and decrease of migration. Therefore, AA452 arises as a potent drug adjuvanting the gold standard therapies for GB, opening the possibility for pre-clinical and clinical trials for this class of compounds. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.