Glioblastoma, also called glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), is one of the deadliest forms of brain cancer. According to research, only 25% of the diagnosed patients survive for more than one year, and only 5% of them survive for more than five years.

Few researchers together came up with a three-dimensional (3D) model of a brain made up of human brain cells and biomaterials. The full article was published in Science Advances. This could help doctors and medical researchers, understand how this tumor grows more easily and came up with a cure for it more sooner.


Guohao Dai, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at the Northeastern University and one of the contributors to the research said,

This is a very difficult brain tumor to treat, And it’s also difficult to do research on the brain tumor because you cannot really see what’s happening.” Guohao Dai

It is very difficult for the researchers to directly obeserve the growing of cancer cells and how it responds to the treatments inside an alive brain.

Studies are typically done in mice or rats, and the animals must be dissected to understand the tumor’s development. Animal studies are expensive and time-consuming, and they don’t allow for day-to-day observations of the same tumor in living tissue. Guohao Dai

Hence, to study the growth of the tumor and the effects of treatment on it, Guohao Dai and its team, which specialize 3D printing live tissue, made a 3D model which acts as the brain and allows the tumor cells to grow.

To be able to study glioblastoma more directly, Dai, whose lab specializes in 3D printing live tissue, grew a three-dimensional model to act as brain tissue for tumor cells to infiltrate.

We use human brain blood vessel cells, and connect them with all the neurons, pericytes, astrocytes, the major cell types in the human brain, a water-based substance, known as a hydrogel serves as a matrix to hold these cells in place and then we use 3D printing to stack them in a three-dimensional fashion. Guohao Dai

The glioblastoma tumor cells which are derived from the patients, with the help of Jenny Zou, a neurosurgeon, and Roland Friedel, a neuroscientist, are placed in mid of the 3D structure. This helps them monitor how the tumor cells grow aggressively and quickly. Moreover, they use a laser to scan the brain and create a 3D image of the structure to get an accurate picture of the activity of the tumor.

We treated the tumor with the same kind of drug you give to a patient when they undergo chemotherapy, We monitored this chemotherapy over two months. And what we found was the chemotherapy was not able to kill the tumor. Guohao Dai

The drugs seem to work initially and reduce the tumor. But they did not seem to work in the long run, and the tumor grew back.

This particular chemotherapy is not effective for the brain tumor, We need to develop and screen other chemotherapy drugs. Guohao Dai

This model is trying to speed up the process of creating treatment of glioblastoma. There are many drugs which seemed effective in killing the tumor in two-dimensional models, but when put into three dimensional one, the tumor seemed to grow up again. This can be helpful in identifying unsuccessful drugs earlier.

You have a tremendous amount of time and cost associated with animal research, With our 3D glioblastoma model and imaging platform, you can see how the cells respond to radiation or chemotherapy very quickly. Guohao Dai

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