A patient-designed tissue-engineered model of the infiltrative glioblastoma microenvironment

Glioblastoma is an aggressive brain cancer characterized by diffuse infiltration. Infiltrated glioma cells persist in the brain post-resection where they interact with glial cells and experience interstitial fluid flow. We recreate this infiltrative microenvironment in vitro based on resected patient tumors and examine malignancy metrics (invasion, proliferation, and stemness) in the context of cellular and biophysical factors and therapies. Our 3D tissue-engineered model comprises patient-derived glioma stem cells, human astrocytes and microglia, and interstitial fluid flow. We found flow contributes to all outcomes across seven patient-derived lines, and glial effects are driven by CCL2 and differential glial activation. We conducted a six-drug screen using four outcomes and find expression of putative stemness marker CD71, opposed to viability IC50, significantly predicts murine xenograft survival. Our results dispute the paradigm of viability as predictive of drug efficacy. We posit this patient-centric, infiltrative tumor model is a novel advance towards translational personalized medicine.