Dr. Thomas Daubon and his team from the University of Bordeaux want to understand how brain tumors get their energy. They are modeling glioblastoma, a highly deadly brain cancer, by creating “spheroids,” tiny lab-grown clumps of cancer cells taken from brain cancer patients’ tumors. These spheroids mimic an important aspect of glioblastoma in human patients in that they have a low-oxygen core where the cells use a different kind of metabolism to maintain their energy and continue to grow and divide. Jérémie Teillon, a core facility engineer at the Bordeaux Imaging Center, captured the above image of a glioblastoma spheroid using a confocal microscope which he then rendered with AGAVE, a graphics tool built by researchers at the Allen Institute for Cell Science that creates realistic-looking sources of light and shadow in 2D images. — Rachel Tompa, Ph.D.

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