Tissue microarray – performing immunostaining on multiple cases of pediatric HGG with matching genomic information will resolve the question of most vulnerable population that could benefit from targeted treatment that we are working towards. The advantage of immunostaining is that we will be able to apply our image analysis expertise to extract single-cell level information. This will help assess the protein expression heterogeneity in pediatric HGG.
Cell lines – We have identified a novel irreversible binder that we aim to develop into a drug targeting the most resistant population of adult glioblastoma cells. Based on our analyses, the same drug could potentially be also acting on pediatric HGG. Working with primary pediatric HGG cell lines would enable us to test biological effects of this drug in vitro and eventually in vivo. We have received a cell line from Michelle Monje, Stanford, and two cell lines from Suzanne Baker, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Adding more cell lines, both with and without histone mutations, will make our study more robust and provide stronger preclinical testing platform for our drug development efforts.
