Glioblastoma

With a median survival of only 15 months, glioblastoma is the most aggressive form of brain cancer in adults. The current standard of care for glioblastoma involves surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. However, there is currently no cure for the disease. In order to better understand the pathophysiology of glioblastoma and target potential treatments, there is a critical need for models that recapitulate the glioblastoma microenvironment.

In collaboration with Prof. Lawler at Brown University, our lab developed a cortical-glioblastoma microtissue model that recapitulates complex inter-cellular interactions in multiple forms of glioblastoma pathology. It also serves as a tool for chemotherapeutic testing capable of detecting effects on distinct cell types. We employed two glioblastoma cell lines (CNS-1 and 9L) for these studies and found that CNS-1 cells migrated throughout the spheroids while 9L cells formed localized aggregates. Through ongoing work, we are assessing cancer and chemotherapeutic impacts on neural functionality, including electrophysiology and microglial phagocytosis.