Project Process

Tubes stretching from glioblastoma (GBM) brain tumour cells and brain cells called astrocytes make a connection through which the cell energy source organelles mitochondria pass. In this study, GBM cells are shown to send damaged mitochondria to astrocytes which they degrade by mitophagy, while astrocytes send their mitochondria to the tumour cells which stir their activity and metabolism. The same characteristics are seen in a live mouse model as in the cultured cell experiments and the team propose the mitochondrial transfers are a tumour adaptation that could be targeted

Read the published research article here

Written by Lindsey Goff

Lindsey Goff

Editor-in-Chief

Formerly immunologist for Cancer Research UK, Lindsey has since moved into the field of scientific publishing. She looks after all BPoD editorial matters.

• Video from work by Ines Saenz-de-Santa-Maria and colleagues
• Membrane Traffic and Pathogenesis Unit, Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Paris, France
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, September 2026