On radiograms, glial tumors are usually seen to invade in a finger-like fashion, while non-central nervous system (CNS) tumors expand in a mass-like fashion. We prepared organotypic brain slice cultures from newborn rats to investigate the invasive behavior of human brain tumors using glial tumor cell lines (U-87MG, U-373MG, U-251MG, and SF-126) and of non-CNS tumors using cell lines; HT-1080 (human malignant fibrosarcoma), RFRF (human lung carcinoma), MIA-PICA (human pancreatic carcinoma), and Colo38 (human malignant melanoma). We selected an area that was centered at a junction between deep cortical layers and the striatum, punched a hole measuring 0.5-0.7 mm in diameter in this area, implanted different rhodamine-labeled tumor cells at that site, and observed their invasive behavior under an inverted fluorescent microscope. Over the course of several days, all glioma cells invaded in a finger-like fashion; U-373 MG cells invaded farthest. Non-CNS tumors expanded in mass-like fashion into adjacent areas. Using the slice cultures, we also investigated the regulatory effect on tumor invasion of forced expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) after gene transfection. The forced expression of GFAP rendered U-87MG and HT-1080 cells less invasive. Our results show that organotypic brain slice cultures are an excellent medium for studying the invasive features of glial and non-CNS tumors.

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