Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common malignant brain tumor in adults. The poor prognosis of GBM is associated with the tumor's highly malignant nature and the inability of some treatment modalities to transport due to the blood-brain barrier. Immunotherapy has been recognized as a promising therapeutic strategy for GBM. Specifically, the singular use of treatments, including surgery and chemotherapy, have been proven to be ineffective options from bench to bedside. Despite numerous preclinical studies, most in vivo GBM models do not emulate the procedural surgical debulking but instead are intact tumors, which has led us to research the usage of immunotherapies in resected cavities. The immune characterization of resected GBM has resulted in exploration of the regulation of immune responses via immune modulators. Therefore, we intend to express the immunostimulatory protein LIGHT using encapsulated stem cells. LIGHT was cloned and packaged into a retrovirus and its' expression was confirmed via western blot. The retrovirus was transduced in mouse adipose stem cells (mASCs). mASC-LIGHT will be used in vivo to assess the effect of constitutive LIGHT expression on immune response modulation. These experiments have implications for a novel stem cell therapy treatment.
