Abstract
Brain tumor biopsies that are routinely performed in clinical settings significantly aid in diagnosis and staging. The aim of this study is to develop and evaluate a methodological image-guided approach that would allow for routine sampling of glioma tissue from orthotopic mouse brain tumor models. A magnetic resonance imaging-guided biopsy method is presented to allow for spatially precise stereotaxic sampling of a murine glioma coupled with genome-scale technology to provide unbiased characterization of intra- and intertumoral clonal heterogeneity. Longitudinal and multiregional sampling of intracranial tumors allows for successful collection of tumor biopsy samples, thus allowing for a pathway-enrichment analysis and a transcriptional profiling of RNA sequencing data. Spatiotemporal gene expression pattern variations revealing genomic heterogeneity were found.