Issue 16, 2018

Acoustic formation of multicellular tumor spheroids enabling on-chip functional and structural imaging

Abstract

Understanding the complex 3D tumor microenvironment is important in cancer research. This microenvironment can be modelled in vitro by culturing multicellular tumor spheroids (MCTS). Key challenges when using MCTS in applications such as high-throughput drug screening are overcoming imaging and analytical issues encountered during functional and structural investigations. To address these challenges, we use an ultrasonic standing wave (USW) based MCTS culture platform for parallel formation, staining and imaging of 100 whole MCTS. A protein repellent amphiphilic polymer coating enables flexible production of high quality and unanchored MCTS. This enables high-content multimode analysis based on flow cytometry and in situ optical microscopy. We use HepG2 hepatocellular carcinoma, A498 and ACHN renal carcinoma, and LUTC-2 thyroid carcinoma cell lines to demonstrate (i) the importance of the ultrasound–coating combination, (ii) bright field image based automatic characterization of MTCS, (iii) detailed deep tissue confocal imaging of whole MCTS mounted in a refractive index matching solution, and (iv) single cell functional analysis through flow cytometry of single cell suspensions of disintegrated MTCS. The USW MCTS culture platform is customizable and holds great potential for detailed multimode MCTS analysis in a high-content manner.

Graphical abstract: Acoustic formation of multicellular tumor spheroids enabling on-chip functional and structural imaging

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
28 5 2018
Accepted
16 7 2018
First published
16 7 2018
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Lab Chip, 2018,18, 2466-2476

Acoustic formation of multicellular tumor spheroids enabling on-chip functional and structural imaging

K. Olofsson, V. Carannante, M. Ohlin, T. Frisk, K. Kushiro, M. Takai, A. Lundqvist, B. Önfelt and M. Wiklund, Lab Chip, 2018, 18, 2466 DOI: 10.1039/C8LC00537K

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