Abstract
[Introduction] Glioma is a malignant brain tumor with high invasiveness. However, the detailed invasion mechanism remains to be elucidated. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of interstitial flow on the glioma invasion process. [Methods] Three-dimensional microfluidic devices were used to culture glioma stem cells. The cells were cultured in 2 conditions for maintaining stemness or inducing differentiation to mimic tumor heterogeneity. Furthermore, the cells were cultured in 3 conditions in terms of interstitial flow(forward flow, reverse flow, static conditions). We observed invasion process and evaluated the invasion ability and morphology in each condition. [Results and Discussion] Differentiated glioma stem cells elevated invasion ability in forward flow condition. Especially, the morphology of cells in the forward flow condition was significantly different from other conditions. On the other hand, both existence and direction of interstitial flow had no effect on glioma stem cells maintaining stemness. These results suggest that the invasion ability and morphology of glioma cells depend on differentiation state and direction of applied flow.
