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.