[Establishing three dimensional tumors in vitro and the reaction of the lymphokine-activated killer cells (LAK) to the three dimensional tumors].

In this study, we attempted to develop a technique, by which three-dimensional tumors were produced from two cultured head and neck tumor cell lines (Hep2, KB) and a colon adenocarcinoma cell line (HT29) using fibrinogen, thrombin, and double layered agar system. The three-dimensional tumor was large enough to perform the histologic study, which showed no significant histologic difference in comparison with the histologic findings of the xenografted tumor on nude mice. Furthermore, we applied this assay model to evaluate the antitumor effect of lymphokine activated killer (LAK) cells on the three-dimensional tumor produced by the technique. When tumor cells were cocultured with LAK cells, the damage of the three-dimensional structure due to the degeneration of tumor cells was observed. These findings suggest that the three-dimensional tumor may be useful to evaluate the antitumor effect of LAK cells in term of head and neck solid tumors.