Empowering High Throughput Screening of 3D Models: Automated Dispensing of Cervical and Endometrial Cancer Cells

Cervical and endometrial cancers pose significant challenges in women's healthcare due to their high mortality rates and limited treatment options. High throughput screening (HTS) of cervical and endometrial cancer in vitro models offers a promising avenue for drug repurposing and broadening patient treatment options. Traditional two-dimensional (2D) cell-based screenings have limited capabilities to capture crucial multicellular interactions, that are improved upon in three dimensional (3D) multicellular tissue engineered models. However, manual fabrication of the 3D platforms is both time consuming and subject to variability. Thus, the goal of this study was to utilize automated cell dispensing to fabricate 3D cell-based HTS platforms using the HP D100 Single Cell Dispenser to dispense cervical and endometrial cancer cells.

We evaluated the effects of automated dispensing of the cancer cell lines by tuning the dispensing protocol to align with cell size measured in solution and the minimum cell number for acceptable cell viability and proliferation. We modified our previously reported coculture models of cervical and endometrial cancer to be in a 384 well plate format and measured microvessel length and cancer cell invasion.

Automatically and manually dispensed cells were directly compared revealing minimal differences between the dispensing methods. These findings suggest that automated dispensing of cancer cells minimally affects cell behavior and can be deployed to decrease in vitro model fabrication time.

By streamlining the manufacturing process, automated dispensing holds promise for enhancing efficiency and scalability of 3D in vitro HTS platforms, ultimately contributing to advancement in cancer research and treatment.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12195-024-00841-y.