Scientists have studied how cells grow and develop to support medical research and drug development for over a century. They grow plant and animal cells in laboratory equipment like petri dishes, glass plates, and various media to produce a collection of newly grown cells called a cell culture. Scientists carefully maintain cell cultures for research, providing them with the necessary nutrients and environmental conditions for survival and reproduction. By studying them, researchers have advanced the scientific community’s understanding of cellular life and developed new drugs and vaccines for diseases like cancer.
Currently, scientists grow most cell cultures in a dish or flask, which is a 2-dimensional culture. Two-dimensional or 2D cell cultures confine the cells to an unnatural flat space, limiting their growth and range of behavior. These obstacles make the results of experiments on 2D cell cultures less accurate than is optimal, so scientists invented a new 3-dimensional approach to address these limitations.
This new approach consists of growing cells in a 3-dimensional system, such as spherical plates, gel-like materials that provide structural and biochemical support, called hydrogels, or specialized devices that create a controlled environment to regulate nutrient delivery, called bioreactors. These systems allow the cells to grow in all directions, similar to how they might live in nature and the human body. Scientists refer to these pieces of equipment as 3-dimensional or 3D cell cultures. A 3D cell culture provides a more realistic environment where cells can move, interact, mature, and organize into complex structures, some resembling organ tissues.
A team of scientists wanted to assess the state of 3D cell culture technology and evaluate how the field of microbiology has adopted it. They found that scientists effectively use 3D cell cultures to develop vaccines, model tumors, and create patient-specific cancer treatments. They explained that 3D cell cultures improve on 2D cell cultures in these areas because artificially flat conditions limit how much cells can grow. This limitation can create the illusion that a drug or treatment meant to kill the cells or slow their growth works when really the cells are just responding to the shape of their environment.
As part of their assessment, the team also found that cells growing in all directions interact with their environment in a way that better mimics human tissues, forming structures like clusters in epithelial cells or invasive patterns in cancer cells. They explained that this realism enhances the accuracy of treatment, drug, and vaccine testing by more effectively replicating how therapies target cells and tissues in the body. While 3D cultures address many limitations of 2D systems, such as mechanical and biochemical relevance, they still face challenges like replicating the complexity of immune interactions.
One core issue with 3D cell cultures the investigators identified is that some researchers find them prohibitively expensive. Three-dimensional cell cultures can be 2 to 10 times more costly to build than 2D cell cultures. In addition, scientists have trouble making and maintaining them because of how complicated they are to design and the specialized equipment required for their upkeep.
The researchers say that, due to these factors, adopting these practices has been a prolonged process for biomedical researchers. The team predicted that slow adoption could lead to problems in the future, since researchers who pioneer these uncommon techniques could struggle to find qualified peer reviewers to assess their experiments. They also have fewer qualified colleagues to reproduce their results.
The scientists concluded that 3D cell cultures provide more accurate models for drug testing, cancer research, and tissue engineering. They could therefore reduce researchers’ reliance on animal models, streamline drug development, and lead to safer, effective treatments. Yet despite their many advantages, 3D cell cultures still come with challenges like high costs, technical complexity, and the need for standardization which continue to hinder their widespread adoption. The solution this team proposed is to make 3D machining more accessible and improve its overall efficiency. They also suggested future researchers continue to use 3D cell cultures to push the boundaries of medicine by exploring their applications in regenerative medicine or personalized cancer therapies.
