Ovarian cancers metastasize by shedding into the peritoneal fluid and dispersing to distal sites within the peritoneum. Monolayer cultures do not accurately model the behaviors of cancer cells within a nonadherent environment, as cancer cells inherently aggregate into multicellular structures which contribute to the metastatic process by attaching to and invading the peritoneal lining to form s...

When compared to methodologies based on low adhesion or hanging drop plates, droplet microfluidics offers several advantages for the formation and culture of multicellular spheroids, such as the potential for higher throughput screening and the use of reduced cell numbers, whilst providing increased stability for plate handling. However, a drawback of the technology is its characteristic compar...

Multicellular tumor spheroids have been used to examine aspects of combined modality treatment since they often recreate the in vivo tumor environment much more closely than other models. The radioenhancement by gemcitabine (dFdC) on human glioma spheroids derived from cell lines (CLS) and biopsy tissue, grown as organotypic multicellular spheroids (OMS), was studied. CLS of GaMg and U87 and OM...

This study presents a novel microfluidic approach for developing large scale screening assays of anticancer compounds on 3D multicellular spheroids. We have developed a microfluidic device with associated protocols that combine the high-throughput characteristics of droplet microfluidics for spheroid formation and aggregation with those of single-phase microfluidics for substance exchange, long...

Three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures produce more in vivo-like multicellular structures such as spheroids that cannot be obtained in two-dimensional (2D) cell cultures. Thus, they are increasingly employed as models for cancer and drug research, as well as tissue engineering. It has proven challenging to stabilize spheroid architectures for detailed morphological examination. Here we overcome t...

Multicellular tumor spheroids are an important in vitro model of the pre-vascular phase of solid tumors, for sizes well below the diagnostic limit: therefore a biophysical model of spheroids has the ability to shed light on the internal workings and organization of tumors at a critical phase of their development. To this end, we have developed a computer program that integrates the behavior of ...

Multicellular spheroids of a human glioma cell line (U-118 MG) and a human thyroid cancer cell line ( HTh -7) were analyzed for the presence of extracellular matrix (ECM) using light microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and indirect immunofluorescence staining for fibronectin, laminin, and collagen. These studies were supplemented by analyses of glycosaminoglycans using autoradiography...

The phenylboronic acid-conjugated chitosan nanoparticles were prepared by particle surface modification. The size, zeta potential and morphology of the nanoparticles were characterized by dynamic light scattering, zeta potential measurement and transmission electron microscopy. The cellular uptake, tumor penetration, biodistribution and antitumor activity of the nanoparticles were evaluated by ...