Glioblastoma and its treatment are associated with extensive accelerated brain aging

Abstract

Progressive neurocognitive dysfunction is the leading cause of a reduced quality of life in patients with primary brain tumors. Understanding how the human brain responds to cancer and its treatment is essential to improve the associated cognitive sequelae. In this study, we performed integrated transcriptomic and tissue analysis on postmortem normal‐appearing non‐tumor brain tissue from glioblastoma (GBM) patients that had received cancer treatments, region‐matched brain tissue from unaffected control individuals and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. We show that normal‐appearing non‐tumor brain regions of patients with GBM display hallmarks of accelerated aging, in particular mitochondrial dysfunction, inflammation, and proteostasis deregulation. The extent and spatial pattern of this response decreased with distance from the tumor. Gene set enrichment analyses and a direct comparative analysis with an independent cohort of brain tissue samples from AD patients revealed a significant overlap in differentially expressed genes and a similar biological aging trajectory. Additionally, these responses were validated at the protein level showing the presence of increased lysosomal lipofuscin, phosphorylated microtubule‐associated protein Tau, and oxidative DNA damage in normal‐appearing brain areas of GBM patients. Overall, our data show that the brain of GBM patients undergoes accelerated aging and shared AD‐like features, providing the basis for novel or repurposed therapeutic targets for managing brain tumor‐related side effects.