Application
Porcine model of spinal cord glioblastoma for the development and testing of pre-clinical therapeutic for spinal cord tumors.
Key Benefits
- Novel lentiviral gene transfer offers a viable pathway to modeling glioblastoma in higher order species.
- The existing model is the first reproducible immunocompetent large animal model of spinal cord glioblastoma.
Market Summary
Currently there are no non-xenograft large animal models of glioblastoma thus this model bridges the translation gap between pre-clinical animal models and the clinic. The glioblastoma model is expected to be utilized more often in the future due to the similarity in the size of the pig’s organs to that of human organs thus the model bridges the gap between pre-clinical animal models and the clinic.
Technical Summary
Researchers at Emory developed the first reproducible and immunocompetent large animal model of high-grade glioma in the porcine spinal cord with radiologic, histopathologic, and behavioral analysis. Unlike previous murine (mouse) models the genetic profile, immune system, anatomy size of the porcine spinal cord in this novel model is more like that of human patients because it utilizes Göttingen minipigs as the animal-model. 6 of these pigs were given injections of lentiviral vectors and all of them developed clinical motor deficits ipsilateral to oncogenic lentiviral injections by the end of three weeks and the researcher were able to make histopathologic confirmation of glioblastoma growth within all the test animals. The characteristics observed found consistent qualitative scoring across all of the test animals with a diagnosis of WHO grade IV astrocytoma.
Developmental Stage
Proof of concept has been demonstrated. Publications Tora, M.S., Texakalidis, P., Neill, S. et al. Lentiviral Vector Induced Modeling of High-Grade Spinal Cord Glioma in Minipigs. Sci Rep 10, 5291 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-62167-9
