3D microtissues are now well-established as an improved in vitro recapitulation of tumor and the likely response or resistance to therapeutic interventions. To that end, a lab at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, has developed a model micro-tissue platform for triple-negative breast cancer cell lines (TNBC) and having the feature that these microtissues are free-floating in a collagen-based hydrogel as a defined extracellular matrix and to perhaps better establish and in vitro tumor microenvironment.
In one measure of the changes over time during growth of microtissues they were monitored longitudinally for emergence of hypoxic regions from day 7 to 21. This was achieved non-destructively using HypoxiTRAK™, simply added to culture medium and providing a direct fluorescence readout throughout the time-course. As expected, these microtissues did show increases in hypoxic microenvironments over the measured period.
Reference:
Daneshvar BN, Bosso M, Greene R, Dzikowski T, Johannson M, Gagnon A, Chamberlain MD. A novel in vitro 3D cancer model based on modular tissue engineering approach. bioRxiv preprint, March 1 2025. DOI:/10.1101/2025.02.25.64023
