High-resolution tomographic analysis of in vitro 3D glioblastoma tumor model under long-term drug treatment

Abstract

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is a lethal type of brain tumor that often develop therapeutic resistance over months of chemotherapy cycles. Recently, 3D GBM models were developed to facilitate evaluation of drug treatment before undergoing expensive animal studies. However, for long-term evaluation of therapeutic efficacy, novel approaches for GBM tissue construction are still needed. Moreover, there is still a need to develop fast and sensitive imaging methods for the noninvasive assessment of this 3D constructs and their response to drug treatment. Here, we report on the development of an integrated platform that enable generating (i) an in vitro 3D GBM model with perfused vascular channels that allows long-term culture and drug delivery and (ii) a 3D imaging modality that enables researchers to noninvasively assess longitudinal fluorescent signals over the whole in vitro model.