Brain tumours
Prof Geoff Pilkington & Samantha Murray
Portsmouth University
2004 – 2007 Research Assistant
Production and evaluation of three-dimensional live cell imaging models for the study of novel brain tumour therapies.
Professor Geoff Pilkington is Professor of Cellular and Molecular Neuro-oncolgy and Director of Research at the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, Portsmouth University.
Malignant primary brain tumours – predominantly gliomas – are rising markedly in incidence in the developed world, and have a uniformly dismal prognosis. Studies of brain tumour cell biology may also have implications for the treatment of other solid cancers, since they are among the most difficult neoplasms to treat.
Current therapies have proved largely ineffective and a major factor contributing to this failure is the invasive behaviour of malignant tumour cells. The purpose of this Dr Hadwen Trust-funded study is to develop two novel three-dimensional culture models. These are being studied in a live-cell, real-time microscopy system, to understand the cellular and sub-cellular events underlying brain tumour invasion. These models will be used to study urgently needed novel therapeutic approaches to brain tumour.
Much research in brain tumour therapies involves studying experimental tumours in rodents and sometimes dogs. However, experimental brain tumours in animals invariably fail to recreate the features of spontaneous human brain tumours. Instead of animals, Geoff Pilkington’s work concentrates on in vitro models using human brain tumour cells obtained from patients at surgery.
The novel in vitro models under development include organotypic brain slice cultures, and three-dimensional ‘normal’ brain cultures juxtaposed with multicellular tumour spheroids to provide a brain tumour invasion model. These new human model systems will be used to evaluate the anti-invasion efficacy of three potential brain tumour therapies, and will obviate the need for some live animal studies.
pdf 2004 report (1249kb)