The Effect of Primary Cancer Cell Culture Models on the Results of Drug Chemosensitivity Assays: The Application of Perfusion Microbioreactor System as Cell Culture Vessel

Abstract

To precisely and faithfully perform cell-based drug chemosensitivity assays, a well-defined and biologically relevant culture condition is required. For the former, a perfusion microbioreactor system capable of providing a stable culture condition was adopted. For the latter, however, little is known about the impact of culture models on the physiology and chemosensitivity assay results of primary oral cavity cancer cells. To address the issues, experiments were performed. Results showed that minor environmental pH change could significantly affect the metabolic activity of cells, demonstrating the importance of stable culture condition for such assays. Moreover, the culture models could also significantly influence the metabolic activity and proliferation of cells. Furthermore, the choice of culture models might lead to different outcomes of chemosensitivity assays. Compared with the similar test based on tumor-level assays, the spheroid model could overestimate the drug resistance of cells to cisplatin, whereas the 2D and 3D culture models might overestimate the chemosensitivity of cells to such anticancer drug. In this study, the 3D culture models with same cell density as that in tumor samples showed comparable chemosensitivity assay results as the tumor-level assays. Overall, this study has provided some fundamental information for establishing a precise and faithful drug chemosensitivity assay.

Personalized in vitro cancer models to predict therapeutic response: Challenges and a framework for improvement

“…Xu, et al, 2013; Young, et al, 2012). The majority of these platforms assessed cytotoxicity as their readout (Hsieh, Chen, Huang, Wang, & Wu, 2015; Z. Xu, et al, 2013), however, a microscale platform developed by Young et.…”

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Ex-vivo assessment of drug response on breast cancer primary tissue with preserved microenvironments

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Microfluidics‐based 3D cell culture models: Utility in novel drug discovery and delivery research

“…There were five reservoirs for medium or drugs in the cell culture module, which were delivered via microchannels to a thin microculture chamber. Mitotic activity and the interactions between oral cancer cells and anticancer drugs were investigated . However, there is still a long way to go to come up with a perfect body‐on‐a‐chip system.…”

“…Mitotic activity and the interactions between oral cancer cells and anticancer drugs were investigated. 110 However, there is still a long way to go to come up with a perfect body-on-a-chip system.…”