Scalable Production of Glioblastoma Tumor-initiating Cells in 3 Dimension Thermoreversible Hydrogels

• DOI: 10.1038/srep31915
• Publication Date: 2016-08-23T09:37:48Z
• Authors: Qiang Li; Haishuang Lin; Ou Wang; Xuefeng Qiu; Srivatsan Kidambi; Loic P. Deleyrolle; Brent A. Reynolds; Yuguo Lei
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 0303 health sciences; Brain Neoplasms; Cell Culture Techniques; 610; Hydrogels; Article; Mice; 03 medical and health sciences; Neoplastic Stem Cells; Tumor Cells, Cultured; Animals; Humans; Glioblastoma; Neoplasm Transplantation; Cell Proliferation

AbstractThere is growing interest in developing drugs that specifically target glioblastoma tumor-initiating cells (TICs). Current cell culture methods, however, cannot cost-effectively produce the large numbers of glioblastoma TICs required for drug discovery and development. In this paper we report a new method that encapsulates patient-derived primary glioblastoma TICs and grows them in 3 dimension thermoreversible hydrogels. Our method allows long-term culture (~50 days, 10 passages tested, accumulative ~>1010-fold expansion) with both high growth rate (~20-fold expansion/7 days) and high volumetric yield (~2.0 × 107 cells/ml) without the loss of stemness. The scalable method can be used to produce sufficient, affordable glioblastoma TICs for drug discovery.