Ex vivo analysis of human brain tumor cells in a microvascular niche model

项目总结 人脑肿瘤中靠近脑血管的区域，称为血管周围龛(PVN)，是一种 脑肿瘤干细胞维持的重要微环境 对化疗或靶向治疗的抵抗力，以及肿瘤向整个遥远地区渗透的途径 大脑，导致不治之症。目前的体外模型，如2D细胞培养或3D肿瘤球体可以 而不是包含这种利基环境。小鼠脑瘤模型可以概括PVN的某些方面， 但在检测昂贵、产量低以及缺乏高分辨率活细胞的能力方面存在挑战 BTSC动态跟踪。在这里，我们建议开发一种组织工程化的3D微血管壁龛-on-a-a- 一种芯片模型，可以整合来自患者的原始脑瘤细胞，以弥合 体外和体内模型。我们的初步研究已经证明了患者来源的共培养的成功。 微流控凝胶系统中胶质母细胞瘤细胞和微血管构筑的研究 室旁核内的BTSCs。芯片上单个肿瘤细胞与单细胞转录本的体外动力学比较 进一步揭示了血管周围定位和转录亚型之间的相关性。 在这个项目中，我们建议进一步研究肿瘤细胞的迁移和定位，使用更大的队列 并将结果与病理和临床数据进行比较，旨在将其发展为体外实验。 患者预后和亚型的功能分析(目标1)。我们将scRNA-seq应用于相同的 样本以生成相关数据，以确定与不同的体外动力学相关的亚型 组织工程化PVN模型，有助于阐明PVN影响肿瘤细胞命运的分子机制 和入侵(目标2)。最后，我们将研究PVN中的肿瘤细胞对化疗和靶向的反应。 通过可灌流的微血管网络进行治疗以评估执行 个性化药物测试和治疗分层(目标3)。该项目将导致一种新的组织工程化 微系统不仅研究PVN在人脑肿瘤发生中的生物学作用，还将开发新的 精密医学人体肿瘤细胞体外试验方法。

PROJECT SUMMARY The region near the brain vasculature in human brain tumors, called the perivascular niche (PVN), is an important microenvironment for the maintenance of brain tumor stem-like cells (BTSCs), the development of resistance to chemo or targeted therapies, and the path for tumor infiltration to distant regions in the whole brain, leading to incurable diseases. Current in vitro models such as 2D cell cultures or 3D tumor spheroids do not contain this niche environment. Mouse models of brain tumors can recapitulate some aspects of the PVN, but have challenges in terms of costly assays, low throughput, and lack of the ability for high-resolution live cell tracking of BTSC dynamics. Herein, we propose to develop a tissue-engineered 3D microvascular niche-on-a- chip model that can incorporate primary brain tumor cells from patients in order to bridge this gap between in vitro and in vivo models. Our pilot study has demonstrated the success in co-culture of patient-derived glioblastoma cells and microvasculature in a microfluidic gel system and observed preferential localization of BTSCs in the PVN. Comparing ex vivo dynamics of individual tumor cells on-chip to single-cell transcriptomes across 10 patients further revealed a correlation between perivascular localization and transcriptional subtypes. In this project, we propose to further examine tumor cell migration and localization using a larger cohort of patient specimens and compare the results to pathological and clinical data, aiming to develop it into an ex vivo functional assay for patient prognosis and subclassification (Aim 1). We will apply scRNA-seq to the same samples to generate correlative data to identify subtypes associated with distinct ex vivo dynamics in the tissue-engineered PVN model, which can help elucidate the molecular mechanisms of PVN in tumor cell fate and invasion (Aim 2). Finally, we will investigate the response of tumor cells in PVN to chemo and targeted therapies administered through the perfusable microvascular network to assess the potential to perform personalized drug test and therapeutic stratification (Aim 3). This project will lead to a novel tissue-engineered microsystem to not only study the biology of PVN in human brain tumor development but also develop new assays for ex vivo test of human tumor cells for precision medicine.