3D Hydrogel Cultures for High-Throughput Drug Discovery

Karen Sperle; Darrin J Pochan; Sigrid A Langhans

doi:10.1007/978-1-0716-2914-7_22

3D Hydrogel Cultures for High-Throughput Drug Discovery

Methods Mol Biol. 2023:2614:369-381. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-2914-7_22.

Authors

Karen Sperle¹, Darrin J Pochan², Sigrid A Langhans³

Affiliations

¹ Nemours Biomedical Research, Nemours Children's Hospital - Delaware, Wilmington, DE, USA.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA.
³ Nemours Biomedical Research, Nemours Children's Hospital - Delaware, Wilmington, DE, USA. Sigrid.Langhans@nemours.org.

Abstract

Our increased understanding of how a cell's microenvironment influences its behavior has fueled an interest in three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures for drug discovery. Particularly, scaffold-based 3D cultures are expected to recapitulate in vivo tissue stiffness and extracellular matrix composition more accurately than standard two-dimensional (2D) monolayer cultures. Here we present a 3D hydrogel cell culture setup suitable for automated screening with standard high-throughput screening (HTS) liquid handling equipment commonly found in a drug discovery laboratory. Further, we describe the steps required to validate the assay system for compound screening.

Keywords: 3D culture; Extracellular matrix; High-throughput screening; Hydrogel; Liquid handling; Scaffold; Stiffness.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

Cell Culture Techniques / methods
Drug Discovery* / methods
Extracellular Matrix
High-Throughput Screening Assays / methods
Hydrogels*

Substances

Hydrogels

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Substances

Grants and funding