Creating Primary Glioma Growth Delay Assays

Background:
Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG) is a rare but lethal childhood tumor with no known effective treatment. Given its location in the brainstem, surgical resection is not feasible, and the only available treatment is radiation therapy, which is palliative in nature. As such, better therapies are needed which can be combined with radiation therapy for durable disease control. Remarkably, there are limited platforms suitable for use in DIPG screening studies to identify such agents.

Project Goal:

I will develop a novel set of tools which will allow us to non-invasively monitor DIPG tumor cell growth in a miniaturized format. After treating DIPG cells with various drugs as well as radiation, we will initially use a dye to label the cells' DNA to allow for visualization of cells. We will then transition to utilizing a fluorescent tag (inserted into the cell lines with a virus) that will help to us to better identify different populations of cells to see if treatments have different effects based on their genetic makeup. After taking images of these cells multiple times a day over a 2 week interval, a computer program will be used to see whether there was a change in the number of cells over time. In developing this assay, the goal is to better evaluate novel therapies, prioritize more successful ones for clinical trial, and hopefully improve outcomes for brain tumor patients.