Oncogene c-MYC inhibition prevents cell growth and decreases sensitivity to radio- and chemotherapy in childhood medulloblastoma cells

Recently, we demonstrated again the negative prognostic relevance of high c-MYC expression in childhood medulloblastoma (MB) in the prospective multicenter trial HIT'91. However, the mechanism by which c-MYC is associated with poor prognosis is not known in MB. We down-regulated c-MYC expression by using small interfering RNA (siRNA) and investigated changes in cellular proliferation, cell cycle analysis, apoptosis, telomere maintenance, and response to ionizing radiation (IR) and chemotherapeutics in a representative panel of human MB cell lines expressing different levels of c-MYC (DAOY wild-type, DAOY transfe…