Abstract 7561: Standardized conditions for growth of lung cancer tumoroids cultured reproducibly in 3D-cultures

Abstract Background: Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related death in Sweden with an estimated mortality of 3500 persons in 2021. Late diagnosis and heterogeneity of the disease lead to difficulty in predicting optimal treatment regime for each case. Further development of personalized therapy would be facilitated by reliable and efficient cultivation of cancer cell samples from patients in a clinical setting. A promising method is to grow the cells as 3D structures known as tumoroids, though the choice of extracellular matrix substrate or solid support most suitable for this purpose should be elucidated. Aim: To assess which extracellular matrix substrates or solid supports which enable lung cancer tumoroid generation reproducibly without affecting the status or detection of genetic alterations and protein expression, using lung cancer cell lines. Methods: Eight lung cancer cell lines, where of three adenocarcinoma and five squamous cell carcinomas, were included in this project. Each cell line was characterized with immunohistochemistry (IHC) for commonly expressed antigens in the two lung cancer types. Also, protein detection with Western Blots was performed. Cell lines found not expressing relevant antigens associated with the specific lung cancer variant were discarded. The remaining cell lines were cultivated in BIOFLOAT TC-Platte 96 well plate, Nunclon Sphera flasks, or GrowDex-T hydrogel, later transferred to a Corning Elplasia 6 well plate, and monitored for tumoroid generation. Results: The lung squamous cell carcinomas HCC-95 and HCC-1588 were both positive for CK5 and p40, while H1703 was negative for both markers. The adenocarcinoma H1975 was positive for TTF-1, also, unexpectedly, seen for NCI-H1703, earlier defined as squamous cell carcinoma. The tested cell lines were successfully cultured as tumoroids in the BIOFLOAT TC- 96 well plate, Nunclon Sphera flasks, and GrowDex-T hydrogel. The mutational status of the tumoroids as compared to the original tumors is currently under evaluation. Conclusion: We here show successful 3D culturing of cell lines with alternative substrates. Further fine-tuning of the chosen reproducible system's simplicity and cost is required before culturing tumoroids from lung cancer patients can be launched. Citation Format: Karina Malmros, Daniel Carlsén, Hans Brunnström. Standardized conditions for growth of lung cancer tumoroids cultured reproducibly in 3D-cultures [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 7561.