Organotypic Models to Study Human Glioblastoma: Studying the Beast in Its Ecosystem

David Pamies; Marie-Gabrielle Zurich; Thomas Hartung

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2020.101633

Organotypic Models to Study Human Glioblastoma: Studying the Beast in Its Ecosystem

iScience. 2020 Oct 1;23(10):101633. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2020.101633. eCollection 2020 Oct 23.

Authors

David Pamies^{1

2}, Marie-Gabrielle Zurich^{1

2}, Thomas Hartung^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
² Swiss Centre for Applied Human Toxicology (SCAHT), Switzerland.
³ Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) Europe, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
⁴ Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT), Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Abstract

Glioblastoma is a very aggressive primary brain tumor in adults, with very low survival rates and no curative treatments. The high failure rate of drug development for this cancer is linked to the high-cost, time-consuming, and inefficient models used to study the disease. Advances in stem cell and in vitro cultures technologies are promising, however, and here we present the advantages and limitations of available organotypic culture models and discuss their possible applications for studying glioblastoma.

Keywords: Bioengineering; Cancer; Clinical Neuroscience; Tissue Engineering.

Publication types

Review