FIRST LIVING MODEL OF BRAIN TUMOUR IN 3-D

X-Ray of a Brain Tumour

FIRST LIVING MODEL OF BRAIN TUMOUR IN 3-D
By Futurity, 17 February 2012.

BROWN (US) — Scientists have created the first 3-D living tissue model of a brain tumour (shown below) to analyse the effectiveness of treatments.

The 3-D glioma model allows the glioma and the supporting endothelial cells to assemble naturally, just as they

would in real life. (Credit: Sun Lab, Brown University)

The model, created at Brown University, is complete with surrounding blood vessels and provides medical researchers more and better information than Petri dish tissue cultures.

The researchers created a glioma, or brain tumour, and the network of blood vessels that surrounds it. In a series of experiments, the team showed that iron-oxide nanoparticles ferrying the chemical tumstatin penetrated the blood vessels that sustain the tumour with oxygen and nutrients. [Read the original study]

The iron-oxide nanoparticles are important, because they are readily taken up by endothelial cells and can be tracked by magnetic resonance imaging.

Previous experiments have shown that tumstatin was effective at blocking endothelial cell growth in gliomas. The tests by the Brown researchers took it to another level by confirming, in a 3-D, living environment, the iron-oxide nanoparticles’ ability to reach blood vessels surrounding a glioma as well as tumstatin’s ability to penetrate endothelial cells.

“The 3-D glioma model that we have developed offers a facile process to test diffusion and penetration into a glioma that is covered by a blood vessel-like coating of endothelial cells,” says Don Ho, a graduate student in the lab of chemistry professor Shouheng Sun and the lead author of the paper in the journal Theranostics.

“This assay would save time and money, while reducing tests in living organisms, to examine an agent’s 3-D characteristics such as the ability for targeting and diffusion.”

The tissue model concept comes from Jeffrey Morgan, a bioengineer at Brown and a corresponding author on the paper. Building on that work, Ho and others created an agarose hydrogel mold in which rat RG2-cell gliomas roughly 200 microns in diameter formed.

The team used endothelial cells derived from cow respiratory vessels, which congregated around the tumour and created the blood vessel architecture.

The advantage of a 3-D model rather than Petri-dish-type analyses is that the endothelial cells attach to the tumour, rather than being separated from the substrate. This means the researchers can study their formation and growth, as well as the action of anti-therapeutic agents, just as they would in a living organism.

Read the full article.