Establishment of 3-D human colorectal cancer spheroids

Three-Dimensional (3D) cell culture plays an important role in cancer biology by providing a life-like microenvironment as a model for drug discovery and treatment. Hydrogels, like many other 3D scaffolds, demonstrate a unique property as matrices for 3D cell culture. The goal of this project is to establish a 3D cell culture for colorectal cancer and apply this 3D model to drug testing. Colorectal cancer is one of the most common cancers in the United States with an early detection rate of 39%. Previously, 2D cell culture of human colorectal cancer cells, SW480, was used to determine the efficacy of anticancer drug PQ1 through the gap junction enhancement. 200 nM PQ1 showed a 4-fold increase of gap junctional cell communicationand subsequently decreased cancer cell growth. Thus, the current project is to use commercially available 3D matrix, PGMatrix, to create colorectal cancer spheroids. The results showed a successful establishment of 3D spheroids of 4 colorectal cancer cell types: SW480, SW620, HT-29, and Caco-2. Following experiment is to determine viability rate influenced by doses of PQ1 in the established 3D spheroids. The significance of this research was not only to generate 3D tumor-like spheroids as model for in vivo model, but also to compare drug response between 2D and 3D cell cultures