Back

Serotonergic neuron-glioma interactions drive high-grade glioma pathophysiology

Drexler, R.; Yalcin, B.; Mancusi, R.; Rogers, A.; Shamardani, K.; Woo, P. J.; Ravel, A.; Wu, S.; Yabo, Y.; Oliveira de Biagi-Junior, C. A.; Lo Cascio, C.; Malenka, R. C.; Heifets, B. D.; Filbin, M. G.; Heiland, D. H.; Deisseroth, K.; Monje, M.

2025-12-12 neuroscience
10.64898/2025.12.10.693579 bioRxiv
Show abstract

High-grade gliomas are lethal brain cancers that are powerfully regulated by glutamatergic neurons through activity-dependent paracrine factors and functional neuron-to-glioma synapses. Here, we report that serotonergic neurons promote the proliferation of high-grade gliomas throughout the brain. Serotonergic neuronal activity drives circuit-specific increases in high-grade glioma proliferation, calcium transients, and reduced survival. This growth-promoting effect is chiefly mediated by activation of the serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine; 5HT) receptor 5HT2A on glioma cells. Knock out or pharmacological blockade of 5HT2A receptors in glioma abrogated the glioma growth-promoting effects of serotonergic neuronal activity, while serotonergic psychedelic drugs robustly promote malignant cell proliferation. Gliomas alter serotonergic neuronal activity patterns, resulting in elevated serotonin release into the tumor microenvironment. Together, these findings uncover pathogenic, feed-forward interactions between serotonergic neurons and glioma cells.

Matching journals

The top 5 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.