Rescheduled: Multicellular Tumor Spheroids in HTS: New Assays

Three-dimensional cell cultures, and multicellular tumor spheroids in (MCTS) in particular, have recently become a widely used tool for preclinical anticancer drug testing in high-throughput screening (HTS) setup. However, even though MCTS have been applied for HTS, their use has been limited to simple assays, such as assessing cell viability or inhibition of growth. This webinar will cover new approaches to MCTS-based HTS. It will present a new, robust viability assay, well-suited for HTS and based on green fluorescent protein (GFP) used as a surrogate marker of spheroid viability. It will also review a first-ever approach to obtain information-rich transcriptomic data from drug-treated MCTS on a large scale. In addition, the presenter will demonstrate how this novel platform resulted in the identification of previously unrecognized, context-dependent drug responses of cancer cells and in findings with potential clinical relevance. In summary, this webinar will demonstrate new ways of how MCTS-based HTS can be used to provide unique insights into context-dependent biology and cellular drug responses. About the Presenter: Wojciech Senkowski will soon complete his Ph.D. in Medical Sciences at Uppsala University, Sweden. In his work, he looks for applications of various tumor spheroid models in high throughput drug screening. For his work, Wojciech has received the AACR Scholar-in-Training Award. He was also a presenter and expert panelist at the Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News webinar on 3D cell cultures, sponsored by Corning in February of 2016.