Kinetic Trajectories of Glucose Uptake in Single Cancer Cells Reveal a Drug-Induced Cell-State Change Within Hours of Drug Treatment

The development of drug resistance is a nearly universal phenomenon in patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) brain tumors. Upon treatment, GBM cancer cells may initially undergo a drug-induced cell-state change to a drug-tolerant, slow-cycling state. The kinetics of that process are not well understood, in part due to the heterogeneity of GBM tumors and tumor models, which can confound the interpretation of kinetic data. Here, we resolve drug-adaptation kinetics in a patient-derived in vitro GBM tumor model characterized by the epithelial growth factor receptor (EGFR) variant(v)III oncogene treated with an EGFR inhibitor. We use radiolabeled 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) to monitor the glucose uptake trajectories of single GBM cancer cells over a 12 h period of drug treatment. Autocorrelation analysis of the single-cell glucose uptake trajectories reveals evidence of a drug-induced cell-state change from a high- to low-glycolytic phenotype after 5–7 h of drug treatment. Information theoretic analysis of a bulk transcriptome kinetic series of the GBM tumor model delineated the underlying molecular mechanisms driving the cellular state change, including a shift from a stem-like mesenchymal state to a more differentiated, slow-cycling astrocyte-like state. Our results demonstrate that complex drug-induced cancer cell-state changes of cancer cells can be captured via measurements of single cell metabolic trajectories and reveal the extremely facile nature of drug adaptation.