Figure 1

Experimental design. Biopsy tissues from human gliomas are minced into small fragments that are subsequently cultured in medium. The tumour fragments remodel and form small tumour spheroids, usually within 1-2 weeks. These spheroids are stereotactically implanted in the nude rat brain, and form xenograft tumours (1^st or low generation) that are harvested and processed similarly to the biopsy tissue. The resulting spheroids are passaged onto a new generation of rats and the previous steps can be repeated to passage the tumour for several generations.