Establishment of an in vitro 3D vascularized micro-tumor model and screening of chemotherapeutic drugs

Abstract The three-dimensional (3D) cell culture system has received widespread attention in drug discovery, but current 3D culture models have limitations, and a simple and repeatable 3D culture model needs to be developed for high-throughput screening. In this study, we designed an encapsulation device to co-culture MCF-7 cells and HUVE cells in core-shell microcapsules. The formation of vascular lumen was determined by immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence, and cell proliferation was detected by CCK-8 assay. Anticancer drugs (doxorubicin or paclitaxel) were added 12 hours after the 2D cultured cells were plated or 7 days after the cells grew in the core-shell microcapsules to observe the drug reactions between the models. We found that vascularized micro-tumors were successfully obtained after 14 days of 3D culture. Moreover, our study showed that the proliferation rate of 3D cultured cells was slower than that of 2D cultured cells. In addition, 3D cultured cells were more resistant to anticancer drugs than 2D cultured cells. In this study, we believe that the 3D culture model may provide an available platform for drug screening and is valuable for the study of tumor development and angiogenesis.