(596aj) Three Dimensional Tumor Spheroids Through Cell-Instructive Polyamine Based Hydrogels

Recently significant efforts have been made to develop in vitro 3D tumor models with structural resemblance to in vivo cancers of interest to study the tumor biology and drug treatment. In tumors, cancer cells co-exist with several other cell types and form complex organ like structures with significant heterogeneity. One popular 3D tumor model is comprised of tumor spheroids, which are generally obtained by culturing cells suspended in spinner flasks. Though this method of developing spheroids is popular, but it suffers from many limitations such as controlling the spheroids size and its collection from culture media. Herein we developed a novel hydrogels from a chemical reaction between polyamines and diglycidyl ethers, which supported spheroid formation and easy separation. We developed spheroids with controllable size from 100 microns to 900 microns. We developed three dimensional breast cancer tumor model containing fibroblast and breast cancer cell lines. Confocal imaging microscopy was used to study the tumor heterogenicity and spheroid cell viability. These preliminary studies strongly advocate the potential of these hydrogels to support three dimensional disease models.