The cellular dispersion and therapeutic control of glioblastoma, the most aggressive type of primary brain cancer, depends critically on the migration patterns after surgery and intracellular responses of the individual cancer cells in response to external biochemical cues in the microenvironment. Recent studies have shown that miR-451 regulates downstream molecules including
AMPK/CAB39/MARK and mTOR to determine the balance between rapid proliferation and invasion in response to metabolic stress in the harsh tumor microenvironment.