Human plasma-like medium facilitates metabolic tracing and enables upregulation of immune signaling pathways in glioblastoma explants.

To enable ex vivo, tractable investigations of whole tumor metabolism, we developed an approach to conduct stable isotope tracing in glioma SXOs cultured under physiologically relevant nutrient conditions. Under these conditions, SXOs maintained viability, composition, and metabolic activity while exhibiting increased immune-related transcriptional programs.