The development of effective drug
screening platforms is an important task for biomedical
engineering. Here, a novel methacrylated gelatin (GelMA) hydrogel-encapsulated
core–shell photonic crystal (PhC) barcode particle was developed
for three-dimensional cell aggregation culture and drug screening.
The GelMA shells of the barcode particles enable creation of a three-dimensional
extracellular matrix (ECM) microenvironment for cell adhesion and
growth, while the PhC cores of the barcode particles provide stable
diffraction peaks that can encode different cell spheroids during
culture and distinguish their biological response during drug testing.
The applicability of this cell spheroids-on-barcodes platform was
investigated by testing the cytotoxic effect of tegafur (TF), a prodrug
of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), on barcode particle-loaded liver HepG2 and
HCT-116 colonic tumor cell spheroids. The cytotoxicity of TF against
the HCT-116 tumor cell spheroids was enhanced in systems using cocultures
of HepG2 and NIH-3T3 cells, indicating the effectiveness of this multiple
cell spheroids-on-barcodes platform for drug screening
