The astrocytic nature of glioblastoma demonstrated by tissue culture

Abstract

Forty-eight cerebral astrocytomas and glioblastomas were studied by tissue culture for two purposes: (a) the establishment of a definite growth pattern of cerebral astrocytomas and (b) the comparison of this growth pattern and that of glioblastomas. According to the grade of malignancy the series was divided into four groups: low-, middle-, and high-grade astrocytomas and undifferentiated glioblastomas. All the astrocytomas showed the same growth pattern with two successive phases. First, bipolar cells in radial arrangement emigrated from the explant, whereas in the last weeks, multipolar astrocytic-like cells in reticular arrangement predominated. The more malignant the cases, the more prolonged the bipolar phase, with retardation of the development of multipolar cells. Glioblastomas showed the same behavior with maximal persistence of the bipolar phase. On this basis, we believe that (a) cerebral astrocytomas have a characteristic behavior in vitro and (b) the glioblastoma is an astrocytic tumor showing maximal dedifferentiation.

Morphological Appearance, Growth Kinetics and Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein (GFAP) Expression in Primary in Vitro Explant Culture of Astrocytic Neoplasms

“…Further some factor(s) in the culture media-probably undefined serum factors-may be influencing the pattern of growth of astrocytomas of higher grade of malignancy in the initial days in vitro (1, 21). Though ours is a short-term study, the trend suggests that with increasing age of culture, the less differentiated spindle/bipolar and epithelioid cells will predominate in anaplastic astrocytomas and glioblastomas as has been previously reported ( 2 , [13][14][15]. This phenomenon of dedifferentiation, observed in anaplastic astrocytomas and glioblastomas with increasing age in vitro, may therefore be a reflection of an inherent trait of malignancy.…”

Coexistence of Two Distinct Tumor Types Within One Posterior Fossa Mass Lesion in an Adult Patient Verified by DNA-Methylation Analysis: A Case Report

“…Our case represents the second reported patient with such a rare histological constellation with the coexistence of a subependymoma and a hemangioblastoma within one lesion. To the best of our knowledge, only one similar case has been reported thus far, dating back to 1985, and the incidence of such histopathological constellations remains unclear [ 8 ]. Furthermore, our results with regard to the histopathological diagnosis could be substantiated by the application of a recently published tool, the DNA-methylation-based classification [ 7 , 9 ].…”

Practical Review on Preclinical Human 3D Glioblastoma Models: Advances and Challenges for Clinical Translation

“…The explant model has been initially used to understand patterns of histologic organization and to study the biological properties of GBM cells [ 15 , 105 ]. Radial migration of cells from the explant makes the model particularly useful to study invasion and migration [ 76 , 78 , 99 ].…”