Neurosurg Focus
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Brain tumor stem cells (TSCs) hypothetically drive the malignant phenotype of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), and evidence suggests that a better understanding of these TSCs will have profound implications for treating gliomas. When grown in vitro, putative TSCs grow as a solid sphere, making their subsequent characterization, particularly the cells within the center of the sphere, difficult. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop a new method to better understand the proteomic profile of the entire population of cells within a sphere. ⋯ This study is the first to show that cryosectioning of neurospheres derived from glioma models in mice and GBM in humans is a feasible method of better defining the stem cell profile of a glioma.