Microfabricated polymeric vessel mimetics for 3-D cancer cell culture

Modeling tumor growth in vitro is essential for cost-effective testing of hypotheses in preclinical cancer research. 3-D cell culture offers an improvement over monolayer culture for studying cellular processes in cancer biology because of the preservation of cell cell and cell-ECM interactions. Oxygen transport poses a major barrier to mimicking in vivo environments and is not replicated in conventional cell culture systems. We hypothesized that we can better mimic the tumor microenvironment using a bioreactor system for controlling gas exchange in cancer cell cultures with silicone hydrogel synthetic vessels. Soft-lithography techniques were used to fabricate oxygen-permeable silicone hydrogel membranes containing arrays of micropillars. These membranes were inserted into a bioreactor and surrounded by basement membrane extract (BME) within which fluorescent ovarian cancer (OVCAR8) cells were cultured. Cell clusters oxygenated by synthetic vessels showed a similar to 100 mu m drop-off to anoxia, consistent with in vivo studies of tumor nodules fed by the microvasculature. Oxygen transport in the bioreactor system was characterized by experimental testing with a dissolved oxygen probe and finite element modeling of convective flow. Our study demonstrates differing growth patterns associated with controlling gas distributions to better mimic in vivo conditions. Published by Elsevier Ltd.