Uncovering the Genetic Basis of Glioblastoma Heterogeneity through Multimodal Analysis of Whole Slide Images and RNA Sequencing Data

Despite being a minor population of cancer cells, the cancer stem cells that are identified in glioblastoma (GSCs) are thought to be the major driving force behind glioblastoma biological heterogeneity and are likely to explain the high rates of glioblastoma recurrence. In the STEMRI clinical trial aiming to study GB heterogeneity and the enrichment of GSC in certain areas defined by multimodal MRI (NCT01872221) [4] different GSC sub-populations extracted from tumor samples obtained by multimodal MRI guided surgery were xenografted into mice brain to study their invasion patterns as well as their aggressiveness. RNA-seq on each tumor bulk samples was also performed. The observed differences in mice survival according to the GSC implanted confirm the heterogeneous nature of tumor cells lineage. In this study, we set out to determine potential genetic markers associated with glioblastoma aggressiveness using multimodal deep learning.