Physiologic Patient Derived 3D Spheroids for Anti-neoplastic Drug Screening to Target Cancer Stem Cells

Our protocol provides a simple method for 3D cell culture and is highly amenable to downstream analysis. This facilitates the evaluation of heterogeneous patient samples and their specific drug responses. The advantage of this technique is that spheroids can be formed from small cell numbers, allowing for both preservation of scarce primary samples, and high throughput screening for patient-specific drug responses.

The hanging drop model creates a physiological environment with 3D drug diffusion and does responses corresponding to tumor stage. This allows for the development of targeted therapies and patient-specific treatments. This method is ideal for studying ovarian cancer, heterogeneity and the development of chemo resistance.