Originally published on 2017-04-07
Emily Chen, Jan Lumibao, and Rex Gaskins had their research on “Extracellular matrix stimuli regulate cancer stem cell population and migratory potential in glioblastoma” presented at the American Association for Cancer Research’s 2017 Annual Meeting. They were a part of the Session on Stem Cell Heterogeneity and you can read their abstract introduction below or read here for the full abstract.
Introduction Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and lethal form of brain cancer. Poor survival is linked to diffuse infiltration throughout the brain, suggesting the need to examine the effect of the tissue environment at the margins of the GBM tumor on processes of GBM invasion. Further, the presence of GBM cancer stem cells (GSCs) in primary tumor specimens is believe to play a significant role in GBM spreading, recurrence, and therapeutic resistance. While biophysical properties of the tumor microenvironment, such as spatial gradients in matrix stiffness and hyaluronic acid (HA) content as well as regional hypoxia, may affect GBM invasive phenotypes, limited tools are available to rigorously examine the relationship between tissue microenvironment and tumor growth, invasion, and therapeutic outcomes. This work focuses on the integration of HA-functionalized gelatin hydrogels with 3D cell invasion assays to investigate the impact of tissue microenvironment on GBM invasion and GSC population.