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Instead of growing cancer cells flat on plastic, they are grown as small balls of a few thousand cells. The balls develop an outer layer of dividing cells and a starved centre, much like a small tumour nodule, which makes them a better test of how drugs get in and act.
Sutherland, McCredie and Inch described multicell spheroids as a model of nodular carcinoma in 1971. Spheroids form when cells are prevented from attaching to a surface, so they aggregate and grow in three dimensions, building oxygen, nutrient and proliferation gradients with a necrotic core once they pass a few hundred micrometres. Kelm and colleagues (2003) described the hanging-drop method, in which each spheroid forms in a drop suspended from a microtitre plate: it worked across a broad range of cell lines with nearly one spheroid per drop and a narrow size distribution (coefficient of variation 10 to 15 per cent, against 40 to 60 per cent for growth on non-adherent surfaces). Plates with ultra-low-attachment surfaces and round-bottomed wells are the other common format, and both are used for high-throughput drug screening.
Spheroids sit between flat cell culture and organoids: they are made from cell lines or primary cells rather than stem-cell-derived tissue, and are cheaper and more uniform, but they do not reproduce the architecture of the tumour they came from.
Cells kept from adhering to a surface aggregate into a three-dimensional sphere whose size sets diffusion gradients of oxygen, nutrients and drugs, giving proliferating, quiescent and necrotic zones.
Query for this technology: (TITLE:"Tumour spheroid models" OR ABSTRACT:"Tumour spheroid models" OR TITLE:"hanging-drop and ultra-low-attachment culture" OR ABSTRACT:"hanging-drop and ultra-low-attachment culture" OR TITLE:"multicellular tumour spheroids" OR ABSTRACT:"multicellular tumour spheroids" OR TITLE:"multicellular tumor spheroids" OR ABSTRACT:"multicellular tumor spheroids") AND (cancer OR tumor OR tumour OR oncology OR carcinoma OR lymphoma OR leukemia OR leukaemia OR myeloma OR sarcoma OR melanoma OR glioma). Results are unfiltered search hits about Tumour spheroid models (hanging-drop and ultra-low-attachment culture), not a curated reading list.
Shares Tumour-on-a-chip, Organoid, Patient-derived organoids.
Shares Organoid, Patient-derived organoids.
Shares Organoid, Patient-derived organoids.
Shares Organoid, Patient-derived organoids.
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