Digitoxin increases sensitivity of glioma stem cells to TRAIL-mediated apoptosis.

Malignant glioma is one type of common malignancy in central nervous system (CNS) tumors which has a very bad influence on the survival quality of the patients. In this regard, lots of studies on improving the therapeutic effects of malignant glioma have been done continuously. This study takes glioma stem cells (GSCs) as the subject and focuses on the sensitization effect of digitoxin (DT) on the apoptosis mediated by TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) to prove that the combination therapy of DT and TRAIL has a more active effect of inducing GSCs apoptosis. This study used cultured GSCs. Comparisons of single drug therapy and combination therapy indicated that DT had a synergistic action with TRAIL to produce a more active effect of inducing the apoptosis of GSCs. This effect was also shown in the changes of expressions of cell apoptosis pathway related protein markers tested by Western Blot method. In conclusion, DT had a sensitization effect on GSCs apoptosis mediated by TRAIL.