We visited Karolinska Institutet and Lewensohn/Viktorsson team and their research facility on a sunny October day. Metka and Barbara presented CutCancer project and their research on “Personalized glioblastoma model for standard and immuno-therapy research” at translational lunch seminar that was open for researchers and medical doctors.

Glioblastoma remains a lethal disease despite current standard treatment with maximal surgical resection, radiation, and temozolomide therapy. One aspect that hinders drug development and study of GB therapeutic response is the lack of an appropriate model that represents the complexity of patients’ tumours. To address these limitations, we investigated the effects of irradiation and TMZ using novel GB organoids that reflect the tumour heterogeneity and resistance to clinical therapies. Furthermore, several novel therapies are currently under investigation, of which immunotherapy with natural killer (NK) cells holds great potential. Therefore, we have established a 3D glioblastoma model that can be used for high-throughput evaluation of NK cell therapy effect and to study the patient-specific interactions between GB cells and NK cells.