Scalable Production of Glioblastoma Tumor-initiating Cells in 3 Dimension Thermoreversible Hydrogels

Authors

Qiang Li, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Haishuang Lin, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Ou Wang, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Xuefeng Qiu, University of California, Los Angeles
Srivatsan Kidambi, New York Methodist HospitalFollow
Loic P. Deleyrolle, University of Florida College of Medicine
Brent A. Reynolds, University of Florida College of MedicineFollow
Yuguo Lei, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

2016

Document Type

Article

Citation

Scientific Reports 6:31915

Comments

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

There is growing interest in developing drugs that specifically target glioblastoma tumor-initiating cells (TICs). Current cell culture methods, however, cannot cost-effectively produce the large numbers of glioblastoma TICs required for drug discovery and development. In this paper we report a new method that encapsulates patient-derived primary glioblastoma TICs and grows them in 3 dimension thermoreversible hydrogels. Our method allows long-term culture (~50 days, 10 passages tested, accumulative ~>10¹⁰-fold expansion) with both high growth rate (~20-fold expansion/7 days) and high volumetric yield (~2.0 × 10⁷ cells/ml) without the loss of stemness. The scalable method can be used to produce sufficient, affordable glioblastoma TICs for drug discovery.