In the search for cancer treatments, researchers use structures called "tumor spheroids." Now a new way to produce these structures using simple components has emerged, making it possible to produce these valuable research tools cheaply and reliably.
In the world of cancer research, creating tumor spheroids and growing them into intact cancer tumors is an important part of testing anticancer drugs and other anticancer approaches. Lab-grown tumors help replicate what happens in the body as cancer spreads, providing a more "realistic" opportunity to accurately test chemotherapy and other treatments.
For example, cells in the central part of a tumor often become hypoxic, meaning they receive less oxygen than surrounding cells, making them better able to resist drugs designed to destroy them. Tumor spheroid cultures help reproduce this condition and give researchers better tools to confound the condition better than they can using 2D laboratory cultures.
Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston point out that current methods of making tumor spheroids are expensive and time-consuming and can lead to inconsistent results. To solve this problem, they created a so-called "DIY" device that costs less than $7 in parts and can generate 4,000 tumor spheres per minute.
The device consists of a nozzle that ejects cancer cells suspended in a solution of algae. The spray passes through an area where a simple vibration motor - the same ones used in cellphones to alert users when the sound is off - shakes the solution, causing the sprayed particles to avoid clumping and form into uniformly sized particles.
The method succeeded in achieving this goal, and the researchers subsequently found that as the spheroids were cultured, they grew into tumors that mimicked the characteristics of tumors in vitro, including the formation of a drug-resistant hypoxic core. They also responded as expected to chemotherapy intervention.
"We developed a simple DIY method for reliable preclinical testing of anticancer drugs," said study co-author Hae Lin Jang of the BWH Center for Engineering Therapeutics. "The cost of equipment is often a barrier to cancer research. Low-cost, simple-to-operate systems like ours are critical to democratizing cancer research and making the science more accessible."
To that end, the research team is making their DIY approach available to other scientists in a paper published this week in the journal Devices.
"In summary, we anticipate that the step-by-step DIY guidance provided in this study will be helpful in setting up this simple tool in every cancer biology laboratory. The ease of use and rapid generation of standardized tumor spheroids could provide a powerful platform to test molecular mechanisms and screen drugs under conditions that better reflect the pathophysiological environment," the researchers wrote.