Objective

Solid tumours naturally grow in 3D wherein the spatial arrangement of cells affects how they interact with each other. This suggests that 3D cell culture may mimic the natural in vivo setting better than traditional monolayer (2D) cell culture, where cells are grown attached to plastic. Using cancer cell lines as models, we assessed 3D compared to 2D cultures in terms of cellular viability, response/resistance to anti-cancer drugs, protein expression and enzyme activity and using techniques such as scanning electron microscopy. Our data indicates that the biological information represented by 3D and 2D cell cultures is substantially different and it highlights the importance of considering 3D in addition to 2D culture methods in pre-clinical studies of both newer targeted and more traditional anti-cancer drugs.