Premium
Three dimensional culture of HepG2 liver cells on a rat decellularized liver matrix for pharmacological studies
Author(s) -
Hussein Kamal H.,
Park Kyung M.,
Ghim Jinn H.,
Yang Se R.,
Woo Heung M.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of biomedical materials research part b: applied biomaterials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.665
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1552-4981
pISSN - 1552-4973
DOI - 10.1002/jbm.b.33384
Subject(s) - decellularization , matrigel , extracellular matrix , in vivo , in vitro , hepatocellular carcinoma , chemistry , liver cancer , cell culture , liver function , cancer research , microbiology and biotechnology , drug , cancer cell , pathology , biology , pharmacology , cancer , medicine , biochemistry , genetics
Three‐dimensional in vitro tumor models are needed to obtain more information about drug behavior in tumors. The aim of this study is to establish a new model for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) using decellularized rat livers. After generating the rat liver scaffolds, HepG2 liver cancer cells were perfused via the portal vein and placed in a bioreactor for 10 days. Histology was performed to analyze cell distribution within the scaffolds. Function and tumor‐related gene expression were examined by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). We evaluated the function of HepG2 cells grown on scaffolds in the presence of a well‐known anti‐cancer drug to investigate the potential application of our system for drug screening. The scaffolds were devoid of cellular materials and preserved extracellular matrix components. HepG2 cells grew well on the scaffolds. The PCR results showed that the cells maintained function and invasion ability at significantly higher levels than cells grown on two‐dimensional (2‐D) dishes or spheroids on Matrigel. Unlike the 2‐D cultures, albumin secretion and alpha‐fetoprotein expression in three‐dimensional cultures were less susceptible to lower concentrations of the drug. Cells grown in scaffolds seemed to respond to the drug in an analogous manner to its known activity in vivo . These findings strengthen the potential use of rat liver scaffolds for screening HCC drugs. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater, 104B: 263–273, 2016.