Predictive biomarkers of resistance to hypofractionated radiotherapy in high grade glioma

Radiotherapy plays a major role in the management of high grade glioma. However, the radioresistance of glioma cells limits its efficiency and drives recurrence inside the irradiated tumor volume leading to poor outcome for patients. Stereotactic hypofractionated radiotherapy is one option for recurrent high grade gliomas. Optimization of hypofractionated radiotherapy with new radiosensitizing agents requires the identification of robust druggable targets involved in radioresistance. We generated 11 xenografted glioma models: 6 were derived from cell lines (1 WHO grade III and 5 grade IV) and 5 were patient derived xenografts (2 WHO grade III and 3 grade IV). Xenografts were treated by hypofractionated radiotherapy (6x5Gy). We searched for 89 biomarkers of radioresistance (39 total proteins, 26 phosphoproteins and 24 ratios of phosphoproteins on total proteins) using Reverse Phase Protein Array. Both type of xenografted models showed equivalent spectrum of sensitivity and profile of response to hypofractionated radiotherapy. We report that Phospho-EGFR/EGFR, Phospho-Chk1/Chk1 and VCP were associated to resistance to hypofractionated radiotherapy. Several compounds targeting EGFR or CHK1 are already in clinical use and combining them with stereotactic hypofractionated radiotherapy for recurrent high grade gliomas might be of particular interest. The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13014-017-0858-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.