ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 12 December 2019 doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2019.00403 Differential Exchange of Multifunctional Liposomes Between Glioblastoma Cells and Healthy Astrocytes via Tunneling Nanotubes Beatrice Formicola 1†, Alessia D’Aloia 2†, Roberta Dal Magro 1, Simone Stucchi 2, Roberta Rigolio 1, Michela Ceriani 2† and Francesca Re 1*† 1 School of Medicine and Surgery, University of Milano-Bicocca, Vedano al Lambro, Italy, 2 Department of Biotechnology and Edited by: Biosciences, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy Gianni Ciofani, Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), Italy Despite advances in cancer therapies, nanomedicine approaches including the treatment Reviewed by: Madoka Suzuki, of glioblastoma (GBM), the most common, aggressive brain tumor, remains inefficient. Osaka University, Japan These failures are likely attributable to the complex and not yet completely known biology Chiara Zurzolo, of this tumor, which is responsible for its strong invasiveness, high degree of metastasis, Institut Pasteur, France Ilaria Elena Palamà, high proliferation potential, and resistance to radiation and chemotherapy. The intimate Institute of Nanotechnology connection through which the cells communicate between them plays an important role (NANOTEC), Italy in these biological processes. In this scenario, tunneling nanotubes (TnTs) are recently *Correspondence: Francesca Re gaining importance as a key feature in tumor progression and in particular in the re-growth
[email protected] of GBM after surgery. In this context, we firstly identified structural differences of TnTs †These authors have contributed formed by U87-MG cells, as model of GBM cells, in comparison with those formed equally to this work by normal human astrocytes (NHA), used as a model of healthy cells.