Jason Otterstrom¹

¹IDEA Bio-Medical, Rehovot, Israel

Drug discovery research increasingly utilizes 3D organoid and spheroid cell culture due to their increased reliability asestimators forin vivoefficacy and toxicity [1]. High cellular density and large size relative to 2D cell culture, however, makeautomated image analysis accompanying microscopy-based screening more difficult. By applying robust algorithms to combinedbrightfield and multicolor fluorescence imaging, we have created software to morphometrically characterize each spheroid in multiplechannels. Our approach accesses information about multiple cell types within each culture system, identifying spatial distributions ofindividual, categorized cells. We utilize widefield microscopy to maintain the fast acquisition and high throughput capacity requiredof large drug screening trials. Our analyses provides multi-parametric growth curves, which identify differences in growth patterns todescribe perturbed physiology in addition to cytotoxicity in multiplexed assays.

References:[1] Edmondson, R, Broglie, JJ, Adcock, AF, Yang, L. “Three-Dimensional Cell Culture Systems and TheirApplications in Drug Discovery and Cell-Based Biosensors”Assay Drug Dev Technol.(2014),12, 207-218, DOI:10.1089/adt.2014.573