IN VIVO LIKE DRUG SCREENING
Testing drugs as it happens in the human body is important to recapitulate the dynamics and cause-effects of in vivo tumours. Addressing this, ScreenIn3D has developed a technology that enables shear stress free perfusion to be applied to multiple 3D models without the need for tubing or flow actuation equipment.
Tumours are complex, heterogeneous and dynamics environments, all characteristics that determine the response of cancer cells to treatments and their potential acquisition of resistance traits. Despite this, the majority of drug tests are carried out in static conditions, altering the natural environment that is found in in vivo tumours. A key challenge in pre-clinical drug discovery is demonstrating therapeutic efficacy in models that are relevant to human biology. The ability to reproduce such dynamic conditions during preclinical drug screening can lead to additional considerations about drug efficacy and tumour microenvironment (TME) reorganization. For this, several elements of the TME must be considered and analysed, as well as the temporal exposure(s) of the tumour models to a therapy.
To meet this need, ScreenIn3D has developed a technology that enables controlled and dynamic injection of multiple drugs to be obtained without the need for multiple tubing connections, syringe pumps or rocking plates, whilst allowing large data throughput and miniaturized screens.
Here, we studied the different response of the same tumour models to the same therapies when these are applied in static or dynamic conditions, considering drug effects in the short and longer term after drug incubation. Our versatile screening platform enables these types of studies to be performed on spheroid and organoid co-cultures, with automated protocols that can be used to fine-tune the microenvironment conditions without disturbing the 3D models.
