Study of the resistance of tumor-cell spheroids to penetration and lysis by activated effector cells

In vitro models to study natural killer cell dynamics in the tumor microenvironment

Immunotherapy is revolutionizing cancer therapy. The rapid development of new immunotherapeutic strategies to treat solid tumors is posing new challenges for preclinical research, demanding novel in vitro methods to test treatments. Such methods should meet specific requirements, such as enabling the evaluation of immune cell responses like cytotoxicity or cytokine release, and infiltration into the tumor microenvironment using cancer models representative of the original disease. They should allow high-throughput and high-content analysis, to evaluate the efficacy of treatments and understand immune-evasion processes to facilitate development of new therapeutic targets. Ideally, they should be suitable for personalized immunotherapy testing, providing information for patient stratification. Consequently, the application of in vitro 3-dimensional (3D) cell culture models, such as tumor spheroids and organoids, is rapidly expanding in the immunotherapeutic field, coupled with the development of novel imaging-based techniques and -omic analysis. In this paper, we review the recent advances in the development of in vitro 3D platforms applied to natural killer (NK) cell-based cancer immunotherapy studies, highlighting the benefits and limitations of the current methods, and discuss new concepts and future directions of the field.

Impact of human bladder cancer cell architecture on autologous T-lymphocyte activation

To investigate the influence of tumor cell architecture on T-cell activation, we used an autologous human model based on 2 bladder tumor cell lines as targets for cytotoxic tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs). These tumor cell lines were grown in vitro as either standard 2-dimensional (2D) monolayers or 3-dimensional (3D) spheroids. T-cell activation was determined by measuring the production of three major cytokines (tumor necrosis factor, granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor and interferon-gamma), known to be secreted by most activated TILs. Changes in the architecture of target cells from 2D to 3D induced a dramatic decrease in their capacity for stimulating TILs. Interestingly, neither TIL infiltration nor MHC class I, B7.1 costimulatory or lymphocyte function-associated factor-3 adhesion molecule downregulation played a major role in this decrease. These findings demonstrate that tumor architecture has a major impact on T-cell activation and might be implicated in the escape of tumor cells from the immune system.

Reversal of intrinsic and acquired forms of drug resistance by hyaluronidase treatment of solid tumors

There are two broad categories of drug resistance encountered during cancer chemotherapy, i.e. intrinsic and acquired. They are observed in virtually every type of tumor with every known anticancer chemotherapeutic drug. As such there is an urgent need to develop innovative approaches of preventing or reversing these types of resistance. One strategy to do so is to develop completely new drugs which may be resistance free, such as direct acting angiogenesis inhibitors (T. Boehm, J. Folkman, T. Browder, M.S. O'Reilly, Antiangiogenic therapy of experimental cancer does not induce acquired drug resistance, Nature 390 (1997) 404-407; R.S. Kerbel, Inhibition of tumor angiogenesis as a strategy to circumvent acquired resistance to anti-cancer therapeutic agents, BioEssays 13 (1991) 31-36; R.S. Kerbel, A cancer therapy resistant to resistance, Nature 390 (1997) 335-336). Another is to devise methods which will improve significantly the effectiveness of those conventional drugs already in use, such as adriamycin, cyclophosphamide and taxol. We have directed efforts towards the latter. They depend on the discovery of a new class of chemosensitizers which act as antiadhesive agents rendering solid tumors more susceptible to such conventional cytotoxic therapeutic drugs. Examples of this concept are illustrated with bovine testicular hyaluronidase and a mouse mammary tumor called EMT-6. When this enzyme preparation is used to treat intact multicellular spheroids of the EMT-6 tumor, the spheroids are substantially disaggregated. Dispersed spheroids are more susceptible to the cytotoxic effects of cyclophosphamide than intact spheroids. Moreover, this antiadhesive chemosensitizing effect can actually be reproduced in BALB/c mice when EMT-6 cells are grown intraperitoneally as an ascites tumor (consisting mostly of multicellular aggregates) and the mice are given injections of hyaluronidase and cyclophosphamide. In a similar fashion, the indifference of P-glycoprotein-positive multidrug-resistant EMT-6 spheroids to the P-glycoprotein reversal agent PSC-833 (a cyclosporin A analogue) can be reversed by disaggregation of the intact spheroids by hyaluronidase. This renders the treated cells highly sensitive to a combination of adriamycin and PSC-833 in a manner similar to the striking chemosensitization effects commonly observed in monolayer culture systems. Thus, hyaluronidase has the potential to reverse forms of both intrinsic and acquired drug resistance in solid tumors, such as EMT-6, which are sensitive to its antiadhesive effects.

Three-dimensional co-culture of human monocytes and macrophages with tumor cells: analysis of macrophage differentiation and activation

Here we report on an experimental system for generating TAM in vitro by culturing human MO and MO-derived macrophages (MAC) within 3-dimensional multicellular tumor spheroids (MCS). MO as well as MO-derived MAC migrate into tumor spheroids and spread throughout the entire spheroid within 16 hr. In contrast, fibroblast-spheroids were not infiltrated. The regular expression of MAC maturation-associated antigens on infiltrating MO was suppressed within MCS of the undifferentiated bladder carcinoma line J82 with regard to carboxypeptidase M (CPM), MAX.3 antigen and CD105. However, MAC within spheroids of highly differentiated papillary RT4 cells failed only the single antigen CD51, whereas MAC expressed the complete maturation-associated phenotype within non-tumorigenic HCV29 spheroids. Interestingly, the suppressive effect of J82 carcinoma cells could only be observed in 3-dimensional but not in monolayer cultures. The J82-MCS induced suppression of CPM and MAX.3 expression was only seen to be operative on infiltrating blood MO: MO first differentiated for 2 days and subsequently co-cultured with J82-MCS showed normal expression of MAX.3 and CPM within the spheroid. Besides the modulation of MAC phenotype, the cytokine response of intraspheroidal MAC was analyzed: upon co-culture MO secreted high IL-1beta and IL-6 but low amounts of TNF-alpha as compared to MAC. This MO typical cytokine pattern remained constant for up to 8 days in culture, again indicating a disturbed MO to MAC maturation within tumor spheroids. In conclusion, a 3-dimensional interaction with tumor cells in vitro results in significant changes in the phenotype and function of the spheroid-associated MO and MAC.