Phenotypically wild-type astrocytes and neural stem cells harvested from mice engineered with floxed, conditional oncogenic alleles and transformed via viral Cre-mediated recombination can be used to model astrocytoma pathogenesis in vitro and in vivo by orthotopic injection of transformed cells into brains of syngeneic, immune-competent littermates.
McNeill, R. S., Schmid, R. S., Bash, R. E., Vitucci, M., White, K. K., Werneke, A. M., Constance, B. H., Huff, B., Miller, C. R. Modeling Astrocytoma Pathogenesis In Vitro and In Vivo Using Cortical Astrocytes or Neural Stem Cells from Conditional, Genetically Engineered Mice. J. Vis. Exp. (90), e51763, doi:10.3791/51763 (2014).