Tunneling nanotubes mediate mitochondrial homeostasis in cancer

We hypothesized that the transfer of mitochondria via tunneling nanotubes help cancer cells to maintain or boost their metabolism by transferring whole healthy organelles from astrocytes (AS) to tumor cells. To investigate this, we explored the transcriptional changes induced by TNT-dependent transfer from AS to glioblastoma stem cells (+) (GSC). We focused on GSC (+) due to their crucial role in relapse and their reliance on mitochondrial ATP synthesis. We performed bulk RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) on sorted GSC (+) positive for astrocytic-derived mitochondria (mito-dsRED+) and on GSC (+) negative (mito-dsRED-) as controls