The Corning 3D Cell Culture Summit is a two-day opportunity for scientists and industry professionals to learn about new 3D cell culture research and discuss best practices. This year, Corning hosted the 2024 3D Cell Culture Summit in South San Francisco, CA.
At the Summit, held on October 15 and 16, 2024, presenters and interactive panels covered topics like disease modeling with 3D cultures, emerging tools for organoid and spheroid culture, 3D workflow optimization, and translational research with 3D cultures.
Here are some of the highlights from presentations at the Corning 3D Cell Culture Summit 2024.
Drug Discovery and Drug Development
Timothy Spicer, PhD, Senior Scientific Director and Research Professor at The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation and Technology, spoke about the greater physiological relevance of 3D cultures and discussed innovative techniques that his laboratory is implementing in 3D cancer research.
Using Corning® 1536-well spheroid microplates, Dr. Spicer's laboratory generates homogeneous spheroids in high throughput for use in drug response assays. The laboratory's experiments testing 4,000 FDA-approved drugs on malignant and non-malignant cell types in 2D vs. 3D have shown that drug effects that appear in 2D cultures do not necessarily reproduce when the same cells are grown in 3D cultures. Dr. Spicer explained that because 3D culture is more physiologically relevant, this difference makes 3D culture a better way to screen for physiologically active new drug effects.
He also discussed the laboratory's work collaborating with clinicians to determine the drug susceptibility of patients' tumors using patient-derived cancer spheroids. Dr. Spicer shared early results from his lab's experiments using Corning Elplasia® 12K open-well plates to culture cancer spheroids, as well as their experiments using Corning Synthegel® 3D hiPSC Suspension Matrix Kit for culture of iPSCs to be differentiated into neurons.
Hamid Khoja, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at FibroBiologics, gave a talk, titled "The Potential Use of Fibroblast Spheroids for the Treatment of Multiple Chronic Diseases." He said that FibroBiologics aims to develop fibroblast-based spheroids and organoids into therapeutics. The company has one product moving into Phase 1 clinical trials and multiple products in preclinical and discovery stages for various conditions.
Dr. Khoja discussed the advantages fibroblast-derived spheroids have over mesenchymal stem cells, including ease of collection from a patient, low cost of manufacturing, and improved viability. He shared results from the company's work generating fibroblast spheroids in Corning Elplasia 12K flasks.
3D Cell Culture Models
Dr. Benjamin Freedman, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington and Chief Science Officer for Plurexa, gave a talk titled, "Modelling Polycystic Kidney Disease and Ciliopathies with Human Kidney Organoids." An in vitro model of polycystic kidney disease (PKD) has been challenging to develop, but Dr. Freedman's lab has been able to model PKD cyst formation in kidney organoids differentiated from iPS cells using Corning Matrigel® matrix.
Dr. Freedman said these kidney organoids can perform solute transport functions and provide insights into the pathophysiology and genetic underpinnings of human PKD and ciliopathies. Scientists in Dr. Freedman's lab are using these PKD organoids to test potential drugs for PKD and are working on a kidney drug development platform that would be widely usable.
Tips, Tricks, Trends, and Tools for 3D Cell Culture
Hilary Sherman, Senior Applications Scientist at Corning, gave a talk titled, "Tips and Tricks for Optimizing your Spheroid and Organoid Cultures." Sherman discussed some considerations in designing spheroid experiments, including ways to determine the number of cells to seed for spheroid growth, ways to promote tight spheroid formation in appropriate cell types, and ways to prevent the formation of smaller "satellite" spheroids within wells.
For organoid cultures, Sherman discussed different hydrogel culture methods and shared tips and tricks for working with Matrigel matrix for culturing organoids. Sherman also mentioned some tools and protocols from Corning that can make things easier, such as Corning Cell Recovery Solution, which can release organoids from Matrigel matrix for downstream processing, and Axygen® wide-bore tips for easier handling of 3D cultures.
Tom Cloutier, Senior Development Engineer at Corning, spoke about scaling up the production of scaffold-free 3D cell cultures using Elplasia technology. Cloutier recalled the history of cell culture innovation at Corning, then described the features and benefits of Elplasia technology and the options available. He said that a major advantage of the Elplasia platform is its scalability, with square- and round-bottom Elplasia plates available for drug discovery and research and Elplasia 12K flasks and plates available for scale-up and process development.
To further extend the platform's scalability, Corning is developing an Elplasia 48K Single Stack product to be used for larger-scale production. Cloutier also shared some early results from scale-up experiments using the prototype Elplasia 48K vessel.
Find 3D Culture Success with Corning
View the presentations on-demand at Corning's 2024 3D Cell Culture Summit webpage to learn more. Or, get in touch with a Corning scientist today.