Abstract

Utilization of Spheroid Microarrays in Cell Line Shipment

Martin Frauenlob, Scientist, Cell Chip Group, TU-Vienna

The shipment of cells and cell lines is associated with high costs and heavy packages because of the amount of dry ice that cells need to be shipped on, to maintain their viability. Arrived in the laboratory, cells are stored in liquid nitrogen and afterward, upon use it still happens that a great number of cells are not culturable. To tackle this issue, we combined microarray technology with multicellular spheroid culture. There we found that due to the compaction in small multicellular spheroids, apoptosis is inhibited over a prolonged period. Further, multicellular spheroids bear already in vivo-like features such as spatial organization, cell-cell interactions, and deposited extracellular matrix, that improve model quality and reliability for drug testing. With this novel shipment technology, we try to improve and standardize cell-based research.