Editorial Article: Pluripotent Stem Cell Differentiation for Cancer Research

Stem cells are often used in cancer research due to their ability to become multiple different cell types. The formation of spheroids (or embryoid bodies), tissue-like growth of cell clusters, in suspension cultures (3D environments), is an intermediate step in producing different cell lineages from pluripotent stem cells and other progenitor cells.

The variability seen in experiments using spheroid-forming cultures has been linked to medium composition and volume, cell density, and duration in culture. While these factors all affect the culture, the surface of the culture dish is one of the most essential factors contributing to the success of spheroid formation in vitro, due to the need to keep cells close and in constant communication, but with low adherence to prevent cell-cell aggregation.

New non-adherent culture surface
Scientists working in cancer research are now able to use a new non-adherent cell culture surface from Thermo Fisher Scientific to support the formation of consistent cancer spheroids in vitro. This simulates the 3D structures of tumor growth and provides a better model system for studying tumor cell progression and the efficacy of anticancer agents than 2D systems and other surfaces. The Thermo Scientific Nunclon Sphera surface is a polymer-coated surface with very low-binding characteristics, which is designed to allow many different cell types to grow in suspension consistently with virtually no cell attachment. This article describes how the Nunclon Sphera’s non-adherent surface is important for researchers seeking to cultivate cancer and stem cell spheroids, since the product is able to grow uniform and dependable spheres. 

Cancer Research 
As described in this article, the Nunclon Sphera surface is designed to integrate into a researcher’s existing cell culture research workflow and facilitate an array of cancer and stem cell research tools, from routine passage of cells to high-throughput imaging analysis. This study describes how the flasks’ flexibility is used to create varying 3D environments. The Nunclon Sphera is available in round and flat-bottom 96-well plates, single- or multi-well dish and flask formats.

When cultured in this range of plates, the cells can be transferred from one vessel to another using a pipette, without disrupting the form of the sphericals. This is where the value of spheroids really comes into play; the ability to transfer (harvest) completely uniform spheroids of different types and retain just one spheroid (embryoid body) per well of a plate are critical for both downstream research and drug discovery applications.