Chemical analysis of multicellular tumour spheroids
Abstract
Conventional two dimensional (2D) monolayer cell culture has been considered the ‘gold standard’ technique for in vitro cellular experiments. However, the need for a model that better mimics the three dimensional (3D) architecture of tissue in vivo has led to the development of Multicellular Tumour Spheroids (MTS) as a 3D tissue culture model. To some extent MTS mimic the environment of in vivo tumours where, for example, oxygen and nutrient gradients develop, protein expression changes and cells form a spherical structure with regions of proliferation, senescence and necrosis. This review focuses on the development of techniques for chemical analysis of MTS as a tool for understanding in vivo tumours and a platform for more effective drug and therapy discovery. While traditional monolayer techniques can be translated to 3D models, these often fail to provide the desired spatial resolution and z-penetration for live cell imaging. More recently developed techniques for overcoming these problems will be discussed with particular reference to advances in instrument technology for achieving the increased spatial resolution and imaging depth required.
Citation
Jamieson , L E , Harrison , D J & Campbell , C J 2015 , ' Chemical analysis of multicellular tumour spheroids ' , Analyst , vol. 140 , no. 12 , pp. 3910-3920 . https://doi.org/10.1039/c5an00524h
Publication
Analyst
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0003-2654Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright 2015 the Authors. This Open Access Article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Description
This research received support from the QNano Project http://www.qnano-ri.eu which is financed by the European Community Research Infrastructures under the FP7 Capacities Programme (grant no. INFRA-2010-262163), and its partner Trinity College Dublin.Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.