Application Note: Real-Time Live-Cell Analysis of Multi-Spheroid, Co-cultured, 3D Tumor Assays
Authors: Kalpana Patel, Miniver Oliver, Nevine Holtz, Tim Jackson, Nicholas Dana, Tim Dale, Del Trezise | Last Updated: May 2019
Overview
Emerging research indicates that micro-tissues and organoids yield more relevant results than traditional 2D cell cultures, particularly in the realm of oncology. The trend towards using multi-cellular tumor spheroids is on the rise, as they better mimic the tumor environment by including an extracellular matrix and various cell types like stromal, endothelial, and immune cells. This complexity allows for more accurate drug efficacy assessments, chemo-resistance studies, and immune-tumor cell interaction analyses.
Traditional techniques for monitoring tumor spheroid size changes are often cumbersome, costly, and time-intensive, involving disruptive fluorescent markers, end-point analyses that miss dynamic changes, or indirect measurements that fail to capture detailed morphology.
This application note describes the use of the Incucyte®️ Live-Cell Analysis system and Incucyte®️ 3D Multi-Tumor Spheroid Assays to study the growth of 3D tumor multi-spheroids in co-culture with either fibroblasts or immune cells, capturing data that may be missed by single time point methods.
- Document type: Application Note
- Page count: 10
- Read time: 15 minutes
Key Takeaways
- Enhanced spheroid analysis
- Quantitative insights into tumor dynamics
- Real-time compound profiling
- User-friendly, high-throughput solution
Figure 3: Temporal effects on morphology revealed through Incucyte® DF Brightfield imaging. MDA-MB-231 cells were seeded in flat bottom 96-well
plates on a bed of Matrigel in mono- or co-culture with NHDFs (1:1 ratio, 1,000 cells/well for each) and multi-spheroids allowed to form (3 d). Incucyte®
S3 DF Brightfield images compare mono- and co-culture conditions over 7 d (10 d post cell seeding). Note the temporal impact of NHDFs on spheroid
morphology.
