Issue 34, 2017

Multicellular tumor spheroids: a relevant 3D model for the in vitro preclinical investigation of polymer nanomedicines

Abstract

The application of nanotechnology to medicine, usually termed nanomedicine, has given a crucial impulse to the design of various drug-loaded nanocarriers driven by the aim to overcome the limits associated with traditional drug delivery modalities, in particular, in the field of cancer treatment. However, an appropriate preclinical evaluation of the real therapeutic potential of nanomedicines suffers from the lack of relevant models that are well representative of the human disease and good predictors of the therapeutic response in patients. In this context, great emphasis has been directed toward 3D tumor models aiming to surmount the insufficient predictive power of traditional 2D monolayer cultures of cancer cells. This review focuses on multicellular tumor spheroids (MCTS), which are currently the most widely employed 3D tumor model in preclinical studies. After a brief discussion on spheroid construction strategies and analytical/imaging techniques employed in experimental settings, the application of 3D MCTS to the evaluation of nanomedicines displaying various physico-chemical properties is reviewed. Finally, relevant examples of scaffold and microfluidic systems in which MCTS have been included are described.

Graphical abstract: Multicellular tumor spheroids: a relevant 3D model for the in vitro preclinical investigation of polymer nanomedicines

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
03 Apr 2017
Accepted
15 May 2017
First published
15 May 2017
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Polym. Chem., 2017,8, 4947-4969

Multicellular tumor spheroids: a relevant 3D model for the in vitro preclinical investigation of polymer nanomedicines

G. Lazzari, P. Couvreur and S. Mura, Polym. Chem., 2017, 8, 4947 DOI: 10.1039/C7PY00559H

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements