Designing a Murine Model of Human Glioblastoma Brain Tumor: Development of a Platform for Validation Using Ultrasound Elastography

Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is a malignant brain cancer with low overall survival. Therefore, researchers are looking to augment its current therapeutic regimen, which includes surgical tumor resection, chemotherapy and radiation. A promising treatment modality, focused ultrasound, has been used as a non-invasive treatment for GBM through multiple approaches such as thermal ablation, immunomodulation, and blood brain barrier disruption. In order to develop these treatments for clinical trials, testing in animal models needs to be performed to investigate the efficacy of the treatment in complex biological environments, as well as to evaluate any side-effects. The more biologically relevant the animal model is to human anatomy, the more applicable the results will be for translation to clinical trials. Here, we report a human GBM rat model, which utilizes an IDH-wildtype, EGFRvIII mutant patient-derived xenograft in athymic rats. The in vivo tumor growth rate was assessed over a period of 20 days to evaluate reproducibility and to develop the model for future testing of FUS in the treatment of GBM.