Drug responses are conserved across patient-derived xenograft models of melanoma leading to identification of novel drug combination therapies.

Background: Patient-derived xenograft (PDX) mouse tumour models can predict response to therapy in patients. Predictions made from PDX cultures (PDXC) would allow for more rapid and comprehensive evaluation of potential treatment options for patients, including drug combinations.

Methods: We developed a PDX library of BRAF-mutant metastatic melanoma, and a high-throughput drug-screening (HTDS) platform utilising clinically relevant drug exposures.

Radiation response of cultured human cells is unaffected by Johrei.

Johrei has been credited with healing thousands from radiation wounds after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs in 1945. This alternative medical therapy is becoming increasingly popular in the United States, as are other Energy Medicine modalities that purport to influence a universal healing energy. Human brain cells were cultured and exposed to increasing doses of ionizing radiation.

Independent motile microplast formation correlates with glioma cell invasiveness.

Diffuse brain invasion contributes to the poor prognosis for patients with gliomas. Analyzing glioma cell migration in vitro, we have demonstrated the spontaneous shedding of anucleate cell fragments that separate from glioma cell bodies and maintain viability from hours to days. Unlike previously described cell fragments that are released from cells as diffusible vectors, glioma cell fragments are independently motile.

Cannabinoids selectively inhibit proliferation and induce death of cultured human glioblastoma multiforme cells.

Normal tissue toxicity limits the efficacy of current treatment modalities for glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). We evaluated the influence of cannabinoids on cell proliferation, death, and morphology of human GBM cell lines and in primary human glial cultures, the normal cells from which GBM tumors arise. The influence of a plant derived cannabinoid agonist, Delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol Delta(9)-THC), and a potent synthetic cannabinoid agonist, WIN 55,212-2, were compared using time lapse microscopy.