Development of a non-selecting, non-perturbing method to study human brain tumor cell invasion in murine brain.

The infiltrative nature of glial and some meningeal neoplasms is responsible for the failure of surgical removal and high recurrence rate of these tumors. Modeling of this process in vitro and in vivo will lead to a better understanding of the pathophysiology of this process and identify targets for novel therapy directed towards this phenotype. We present the results of the development and refinement of two model systems of tumor invasion: one in vitro barrier assay using the basement membrane extract Matrigel, and one in vivo where molecular detection of tumor cells allows single cell discrimination by in situ hybridization histochemistry. These techniques have strong correlations which validate their utility as measures of nervous system tumor invasion.