Designing a bio-inspired bio-mimetic in vitro system for the optimisation of ex vivo studies of pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive and lethal human malignancies. Drug therapies and radiotherapy are used for treatment as adjuvants to surgery, but outcomes remain disappointing. Advances in tissue engineering point that three-dimensional cultures can reflect the in vivo tumour micro-environment and can guarantee a physiological distribution of oxygen, nutrients and drugs, therefore, being promising low cost tools for therapy development. In this work we review crucial elements, i.e., structural and environmental, that should be considered for an accurate design of an ex vivo platform for studies of pancreatic cancer. Furthermore, we propose environmental stress response biomarkers as platform readouts for the efficient control and further prediction of the pancreatic cancer response to the environmental and treatment input

Metabolomics in Animal Cell Culture

Metabolomics is defined as a global quantitative assessment of metabolites within a biological system. Metabolic profiling of cell cultures has many potential applications as well as advantages to currently utilized methods for cell-line testing. Metabolite concentrations represent sensitive markers of genomic changes and responses of cells to external stimuli. Effects of drugs or toxins on cell cultures can be observed through the changes in metabolite concentrations. When cell cultures used for production of various biomolecules metabolomics can aid in optimization of cell growth. Metabolomics can also be used as a method for routine monitoring of extracellular metabolic changes in real time measurements. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry are major analytical platforms used for metabolomics measurements. These methods provide detailed, non-biased and highly complementary chemical analyses of metabolic changes within cells (fingerprint) and in excreted metabolites (footprint). This chapter provides review of current applications of metabolomics in cell cultures with an overview of experimental and data analysis methodologies.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye