Department of Biomedical Engineering, Gachon University, Seongnam, 13120, Republic of Korea.
Central R&D Center, Medical & Bio Decision (MBD) Co., Ltd, Suwon, 16229, Republic of Korea.
Sci Rep. 2022 Nov 7;12(1):18937. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-23474-5.
Various three-dimensional (3D) cell culture methods have been developed to implement tumor models similar to in vivo. However, the conventional 3D cell culture method has limitations such as difficulty in using an extracellular matrix (ECM), low experimental reproducibility, complex 3D cell culture protocol, and difficulty in applying to high array plates such as 96- or 384-plates. Therefore, detailed protocols related to robust 3D-aggregated spheroid model (3D-ASM) production were optimized and proposed. A specially designed wet chamber was used to implement 3D-ASM using the hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cell lines, and the conditions were established for the icing step to aggregate the cells in one place and optimized ECM gelation step. Immunofluorescence (IF) staining is mainly used to simultaneously analyze drug efficacy and changes in drug-target biomarkers. By applying the IF staining method to the 3D-ASM model, confocal microscopy imaging and 3D deconvolution image analysis were also successfully performed. Through a comparative study of drug response with conventional 2D-high throughput screening (HTS), the 3D-HTS showed a more comprehensive range of drug efficacy analyses for HCC cell lines and enabled selective drug efficacy analysis for the FDA-approved drug sorafenib. This suggests that increased drug resistance under 3D-HTS conditions does not reduce the analytical discrimination of drug efficacy, also drug efficacy can be analyzed more selectively compared to the conventional 2D-HTS assay. Therefore, the 3D-HTS-based drug efficacy analysis method using an automated 3D-cell spotter/scanner, 384-pillar plate/wet chamber, and the proposed 3D-ASM fabrication protocol is a very suitable platform for analyzing target drug efficacy in HCC cells.
已经开发出了各种三维(3D)细胞培养方法,以实现类似于体内的肿瘤模型。然而,传统的 3D 细胞培养方法存在一些局限性,例如难以使用细胞外基质(ECM)、实验重现性低、复杂的 3D 细胞培养方案以及难以应用于高阵列板(如 96 孔或 384 孔板)等。因此,优化并提出了详细的关于稳健的 3D 聚集球体模型(3D-ASM)生产的方案。使用专门设计的湿室,使用肝细胞癌(HCC)细胞系实施 3D-ASM,并建立了冰浴步骤以将细胞聚集在一个地方的条件,并优化了 ECM 凝胶化步骤。免疫荧光(IF)染色主要用于同时分析药物疗效和药物靶标生物标志物的变化。通过将 IF 染色方法应用于 3D-ASM 模型,还成功地进行了共聚焦显微镜成像和 3D 反卷积图像分析。通过与传统的 2D-高通量筛选(HTS)进行药物反应的比较研究,3D-HTS 对 HCC 细胞系进行了更全面的药物疗效分析,并能够对已批准的药物索拉非尼进行选择性药物疗效分析。这表明,3D-HTS 条件下的药物耐药性增加不会降低药物疗效的分析辨别力,与传统的 2D-HTS 测定相比,还可以更有选择性地分析药物疗效。因此,基于 3D-HTS 的药物疗效分析方法,使用自动化的 3D 细胞点样器/扫描仪、384 柱板/湿室以及所提出的 3D-ASM 制造方案,是分析 HCC 细胞中靶标药物疗效的非常合适的平台。