Abstract
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest malignancies. Three-dimensional (3D) pancreatic cancer cell models for drug screening have been established to improve treatment for pancreatic cancer. However, few studies focus on different drug responses and drug-related molecular mechanisms in various types of 3D cell models. In this study, we constructed 3D scaffold-free cell models and 3D scaffold‐based cell models of pancreatic cancer, evaluated chemotherapeutic drug responses in different 3D models, assessed clinical relevance of the models, and investigated molecular mechanisms of chemoresistance and drug pathways in different 3D models. Both types of 3D models showed resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs, and scaffold-based pancreatic cancer models could better reflect in vivo drug efficacy than 2D and scaffold-free pancreatic cancer models did. Increased cell adhesion, extracellular matrix (ECM) synthesis and drug transport were essential for drug resistance in 3D models, and anti-apoptosis might contribute to extreme chemoresistance in scaffold‐free models. Moreover, scaffold-based pancreatic cancer models were more suitable than scaffold-free models for drug pathway research.
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The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. DX and LC searched the literature and designed the study. SJ and DP were responsible for the experimental operation and analysis of experimental results. The first draft of the manuscript was written by DW and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Xie, D., Jia, S., Ping, D. et al. Scaffold-based three-dimensional cell model of pancreatic cancer is more suitable than scaffold-free three-dimensional cell model of pancreatic cancer for drug discovery. Cytotechnology 74, 657–667 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10616-022-00553-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10616-022-00553-z