Wong Chung, Vosburgh Evan, Levine Arnold J, Cong Lei, Xu Eugenia Y
Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation.
J Vis Exp. 2012 Aug 14(66):e4218. doi: 10.3791/4218.
Neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) are rare tumors, with an incidence of two per 100, 000 individuals per year, and they account for 0.5% of all human malignancies. Other than surgery for the minority of patients who present with localized disease, there is little or no survival benefit of systemic therapy. Therefore, there is a great need to better understand the biology of NETs, and in particular define new therapeutic targets for patients with nonresectable or metastatic neuroendocrine tumors. 3D cell culture is becoming a popular method for drug screening due to its relevance in modeling the in vivo tumor tissue organization and microenvironment. The 3D multicellular spheroids could provide valuable information in a more timely and less expensive manner than directly proceeding from 2D cell culture experiments to animal (murine) models. To facilitate the discovery of new therapeutics for NET patients, we have developed an in vitro 3D multicellular spheroids model using the human NET cell lines. The NET cells are plated in a non-adhesive agarose-coated 24-well plate and incubated under physiological conditions (5% CO2, 37 °C) with a very slow agitation for 16-24 hr after plating. The cells form multicellular spheroids starting on the 3(rd) or 4(th) day. The spheroids become more spherical by the 6(th) day, at which point the drug treatments are initiated. The efficacy of the drug treatments on the NET spheroids is monitored based on the morphology, shape and size of the spheroids with a phase-contrast light microscope. The size of the spheroids is estimated automatically using a custom-developed MATLAB program based on an active contour algorithm. Further, we demonstrate a simple method to process the HistoGel embedding on these 3D spheroids, allowing the use of standard histological and immunohistochemical techniques. This is the first report on generating 3D spheroids using NET cell lines to examine the effect of therapeutic drugs. We have also performed histology on these 3D spheroids, and displayed an example of a single drug's effect on growth and proliferation of the NET spheroids. Our results support that the NET spheroids are valuable for further studies of NET biology and drug development.
神经内分泌肿瘤(NETs)是罕见肿瘤,每年发病率为十万分之二,占所有人类恶性肿瘤的0.5%。除了对少数出现局限性疾病的患者进行手术外,全身治疗几乎没有或根本没有生存益处。因此,非常需要更好地了解NETs的生物学特性,尤其是为不可切除或转移性神经内分泌肿瘤患者确定新的治疗靶点。由于3D细胞培养在模拟体内肿瘤组织结构和微环境方面具有相关性,它正成为一种流行的药物筛选方法。与直接从二维细胞培养实验进入动物(小鼠)模型相比,3D多细胞球体可以以更及时、更经济的方式提供有价值的信息。为了促进为NET患者发现新的治疗方法,我们使用人NET细胞系开发了一种体外3D多细胞球体模型。将NET细胞接种在非粘附性琼脂糖包被的24孔板中,接种后在生理条件(5%二氧化碳,37℃)下以非常缓慢的搅拌孵育16 - 24小时。细胞在第3或第4天开始形成多细胞球体。到第6天,球体变得更呈球形,此时开始进行药物处理。基于相差光学显微镜观察球体的形态、形状和大小,监测药物处理对NET球体的疗效。使用基于主动轮廓算法的定制开发的MATLAB程序自动估计球体的大小。此外,我们展示了一种对这些3D球体进行HistoGel包埋处理的简单方法,从而可以使用标准的组织学和免疫组织化学技术。这是关于使用NET细胞系生成3D球体以检查治疗药物效果的首次报告。我们还对这些3D球体进行了组织学检查,并展示了单一药物对NET球体生长和增殖影响的一个例子。我们的结果支持NET球体对于NET生物学和药物开发的进一步研究具有价值。