Author:

Abstract:

Glioblastoma (GBM) remains the most challenging brain tumor, illustrated an average survival of 15 months. Recent advances in next-generation sequencing (NGS) gave rise to an abundance of information regarding the genetic complexity of GBM. This includes extensive interpatient and intra-tumoral heterogeneity. These observations suggest the need for individualised high throughput approaches for genetic and therapeutic analysis of patient tumors. Still research relied mainly on conventional lines, which insufficiently represent the heterogeneity found across GBM tumors. At the Leuven Living Tissue Bank (LBT), we generated a library of highly characterized patient-derived cell lines (PDCLs). These lines are derived from fresh brain tumor samples resected at the University Hospitals Leuven starting early 2017, following approval from the Ethical committee (S59804) and written consent from each patient. Dissociated cells are exposed to various culturing conditions. When grown beyond passage 4, biomarkers expression was analysed using immunohistochemistry and qPCR. Individual clinical information is available and continuously collected. Currently, more than 80 individual tumors have been acquired, varying from primary GBM to metastatic brain cancer. Cultures were stablished in 70% of received tumors, while about 50% (overall) showed an expression profile correlating to GBM. Moreover, expression of biomarkers in these PDCLs is highly similar to the original tumor. This first Belgian collection of highly characterised PDCLs derived from brain cancer is an invaluable tool for future genetic and therapeutic research. The collected clinical data allows us to understand the biology of GBM and correlate this to individualised clinical outcome.