Exploiting combined MRI and high-resolution intravital microscopy, the Joyce lab have investigated the cellular and non-cellular evolution of the glioblastoma microenvironment over the course of disease progression.
Cancers develop and progress within complex environments, involving multiple interactions with the surrounding healthy tissue along with newly infiltrating immune cells, which collectively contribute to the regulation of tumor progression and metastasis. In glioblastoma, the most malignant form of primary brain tumor in adults, the tumor microenvironment is substantially different compared to the microenvironment of other cancer types.
Researchers in the lab of Prof. Johanna Joyce have investigated whether and how the tumor microenvironment of glioblastoma evolves dynamically over the course of disease progression, as well as in response to treatment, both in terms of abundance and behavior of specific cellular and non-cellular components. Their study*, published in iScience, developed a multimodal longitudinal imaging approach that combines magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with the power of high-resolution two-photon intravital microscopy. The latest data science tools were leveraged to perform single cell imaging analysis of hundreds of thousands of individual cells that were imaged in the same individuals over many weeks, thereby enabling an unbiased interrogation of the changing tumor microenvironment. The project was led by joint first-authors Anoek Zomer and Davide Croci in the Joyce lab.
Support for this project was provided in part by the Charlie Teo Foundation, Swiss Cancer Research Foundation, the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, and the University of Lausanne. Anoek Zomer was supported in part by a fellowship from the Human Frontier Science Program and a Veni fellowship from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.
*Multimodal imaging of the dynamic brain tumor microenvironment during glioblastoma progression and in response to treatment