Our group is internationally established in the field of basic research and investigates cancer biology, in particular the processes of invasion and therapy resistance of the brain tumour glioblastoma. We focus on the biology of cancer stem cells, the tumour microenvironment, novel biomarkers for improved diagnosis and treatment of gliomas, and novel therapeutic approaches to cancer, such as immunotherapy. We use state-of-the-art methods and tumour models, including patient-derived cancer cells and cancer stem cells, 3D cellular models and tumour organoids. When investigating novel therapeutic methods, we always use standard therapies such as radiation as a reference and as a combination approach together with new therapies. Radiation in combination with chemotherapy is a standard therapy for the treatment of glioblastoma. We choose CellRad+ for our research approaches to mimic the standard therapy on our cell models, such as patient-derived cell lines, cancer stem cell lines and more complex models such as glioblastoma organoids that include the tumour microenvironment. What are the resistance mechanisms that are activated in the cells that survive radiation alone or in combination with chemotherapy and immunotherapy, are our research questions? We use different doses from 2 to 10 Gy in a single dose or in a fractionated dose to better mimic the clinical approach. To answer our research questions, we were looking for a safe, easy-to-use cell irradiation device that does not require radioisotopes and that we can use in multiple experiments every day. A benchtop irradiator that can be placed directly in the cell culture room is very important for our time-dependent experiments. For this reason, CellRad was the perfect solution for us and we are more than happy to have it in our lab. We use it every day and so far everything has been perfect.

"We use routinely Access Array System from Fluidigm for NGS library preparation for targeted amplicon resequencing in diagnostic of hematologic malignancies."