A living tissue bank of patient-derived cell lines from high-grade brain cancer

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and aggressive primary central nervous system malignancy with a median survival of about 15 months upon maximal standard-of-care therapy. Even though the genetic aberrations of GBM have been studied extensively, treatment options remain limited and very inefficient. To speed up the identification of alternative therapeutic approaches, in vitro studies on cancer cell lines offer a valid strategy. However, many established cancer cell lines, which are commonly used in cancer research for which they have been cultured for several decades, have drifted away from their original phenptype and therefore often poorly represent clinical phenotypes. Patient-derived tumor cell lines, which are cultured for only brief periods of time, are therefore gaining traction as novel, more representative cancer models. This project aims at developing a “living tissue bank” of well-characterized, short-cultured patient-derived GBM cancer cell lines that maximally preserve phenotypic and genomic fidelity and heterogeneity. Biopsies of GBM (newly diagnosed and/or recurrent) will be collected at the University Hospitals Leuven (about 50/year), from which tumor cells will be extracted and attempted to grow in vitro. This will be done using both standard stem cell culture media, in which a take-rate of about 30% can be achieved, as well as in an array of additional culturing conditions to increase and optimize the overall take rate. Each successfully expanded cell line (beyond passage 3) will be fully characterized using state-of-the-art genetics and pathology and compared to the tumor of origin. This will be the first Belgian collection of well-characterized patient-derived brain cancer cell lines, which traps the unique genetic and phenotypic features of each individual patient, and offers unprecedented opportunities to screen for genetic and therapeutic dependencies.

Keywords:brain cancer

Disciplines:Morphological sciences, Oncology