Abstract
Brain tumors remain among the most aggressive cancers due to their ability to adapt to microenvironmental stress to sustain malignancy and resist therapy. We propose Drosophila lethal(3) tumorous brain [ l(3)tb ] mutant, which develops rapidly expanding brain tumors, as a genetically tractable in vivo model to study stress-adaptive tumor growth. The progressive brain enlargement in l(3)tb/l(3)tb larvae is accompanied by robust tumor size-dependent induction of Hsp70, a molecular chaperone linked to poor glioma prognosis. These findings position the l(3)tb model as a powerful platform for evaluation of stress tolerance in brain tumors.
