Glioblastoma (GBM) is a devastating incurable malignant brain cancer in need of new treatments. We have begun to investigate the feasibility of a primary adult cell type (Brain-Derived Progenitor Cells, BDPCs) as a novel therapeutic delivery system to GBM. Our objective was to track the viability of BDPCs after intratumoral infusion into syngeneic orthotopic rat GBM tumours using non-invasive bioluminescence imaging (BLI). We hypothesize rat BDPCs will survive greater than 1 week following infusion into orthotopic F98 GBM tumors. BDPCs harvested from the cortex of adult Fischer rats were expanded in culture then engineered to co-express firefly Luciferase for BLI as well as the fluorescence protein tdTomato. In vitro assays displayed consistent lentiviral engineering of transgenes as well as statistically significant GBM-homing by BDPCs (p \u3c 0.01). All animals showed in vivo BLI signal until the study’s endpoint, confirming viable BDPCs were still present. Histological examination revealed small numbers of fluorescent BDPCs at the tumours’ invading edges in frozen coronal sections
