Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 November 2009
Introduction
Despite several decades of intensive study, the treatment of brain tumors, whether they have arisen primarily within the central nervous system (CNS) or spread there from elsewhere, represents a formidable challenge for the clinician. Several reasons underlie the difficulties in brain tumor treatment including delivering enough therapy through a blood–brain barrier (BBB), circumventing the relative immunosuppression that occurs both as a result of the brain tumor and due to its development in a relatively immunologically protected area, and the need to preserve the normal surrounding CNS. Such obstacles underscore the importance of accurate preclinical models both to understand the processes by which tumors develop and are sustained as well as to test the effectiveness of various treatments.
While in vitro systems are frequently used to assess both biology and treatment of tumors, the importance of the tumor–normal tissue relationships can only be addressed with in vivo models. Several years ago, Peterson et al. proposed criteria by which to judge the validity of such a model, including: (1) the growth rate of the tumor and its malignancy characteristics should be predictable and reproducible; (2) the species used should be small and inexpensively maintained so that large numbers may be evaluated; (3) the time to tumor induction should be relatively short and the survival time after induction should be standardized; (4) the tumor should have the same characteristics as the clinical tumor in terms of intraparenchymal growth, invasiveness, angiogenesis; (5) tumors should be maintainable in culture and should be safe for laboratory personnel; and (6) therapeutic responsiveness must imitate that of the clinical tumor being tested.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.