The design of a heterocellular 3D architecture and its application to monitoring the behavior of cancer cells in response to the spatial distribution of endothelial cells

Abstract

The spatial cell distribution is one of the critical features for governing cellular interactions and their consequent behaviors. Here we suggest a novel method of building a hierarchical cellular structure by stacking cell-attached microplate structures with specific configurations within hydrogel layers. This method is applied to the reconstruction of the 3D architecture of a liver lobule and the development of an experimental model of the various phases of cancer angiogenesis.