Organotypic Models to Study Human Glioblastoma: Studying the Beast in Its Ecosystem
David Pamies,
Marie-Gabrielle Zurich,
Thomas Hartung
Affiliations
David Pamies
Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; Swiss Centre for Applied Human Toxicology (SCAHT), Switzerland; Corresponding author
Marie-Gabrielle Zurich
Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; Swiss Centre for Applied Human Toxicology (SCAHT), Switzerland
Thomas Hartung
Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) Europe, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany; Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT), Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA
Summary: 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.
