Cancer research demands models that emulate the tumor microenvironment and facilitate high-throughput drug screening for evaluating anti-metastatic and anti-angiogenic drugs efficiently. We present a novel multilayer multicellular platform integrating cancer and endothelial cells, compatible with standard high-throughput screening methods. Specifically, we engineered three-dimensional models of cervical and endometrial cancer in 384-well plate formats, optimizing for cancer growth, invasion, and endothelial microvessel formation – key targets for anti-cancer therapies. Automated replication of these models would enable large-scale compound screening from the FDA approved drug library. Human cervical cancer cells (SiHa, Ca Ski) and endometrial cancer cells (HEC-1A) were dispensed using the HP D100 Single Cell Dispenser onto various hydrogel substrates. Human microvascular endothelial cells (hMVECs) and human umbilical vein endothelial cells (hUVECs) were manually dispensed onto select hydrogels. Evaluation of dispensing precision revealed few significant differences between automatically and manually dispensed cancer cells. Viability, proliferation, and phenotypic responses remained consistent across both dispensing methods. Our findings underscore the feasibility of automating multilayer multicellular model fabrication, enhancing reproducibility, and enabling large-scale hit identification studies for expanding treatment options and refining personalized medicine in cervical and endometrial cancers.
Samantha Seymour is a PhD candidate in chemical engineering working in the Fogg Lab. She graduated from Lehigh University with a BS in chemical engineering, and a senior thesis on the topic of loading outer membrane vesicles with chemotherapeutics. Her research at OSU is focused on studying the transcriptome and developing in vitro models of mucosal epithelium.