e17558 Background: Epithelial Ovarian Cancer (EOC) is the most common cause of death among gynecological malignancies. This is a result of the high rate of recurrence and chemo-resistance in EOC patients. Therefore, the development of new therapeutics is crucial. A major factor contributing to this is the lack of therapeutic candidates is lack of translational accuracy in preclinical models. Recently, 3-dimensional (3-D) models have aided in accurately recreating tumor biology. We have developed an EOC 3-D perfused bioreactor system that recapitulates EOC tumor biology and incorporates tumor biomechanical regulation. This model allows for us to more accurately predict the clinical response of new drug candidates, which aids in elimination of ineffective candidates prior to clinical trials. Methods: EOC cell lines (luciferase-taggedSKOV-3 and OVCAR-8) were embedded in a relevant extracellular matrix (ECM) and injected into a perfused, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) bioreactor. Microchannels were embedded in matrigel so that the cell culture media with or without chemotherapy could flow through the perfused PDMS to provide nutrient delivery and gas exchange enhancing viability and function of surrounding cells. The bioreactors were connected to a peristaltic pump that allowed for the cell culture media to perfuse over a 7-day period. We monitored cell viability using bioluminescence imaging (BLI), immunohistochemistry (IHC), and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release in media. Results: BLI showed a linear increase in SKOV-3 and OVCAR-8 cell growth over 7 days. These results were confirmed by IHC measuring the number of nucleated cells per micron2. Graphical representation of the region of interest (ROI) showed a high correlation between IHC staining of nucleated cells and BLI score. IHC analysis of PAX8 staining was positive and proved that the perfusion bioreactor system maintains EOC biology over time. In addition, our results suggest that the bioreactor is a suitable model for drug preclinical testing in both cell lines as well as in patients’ samples. Conclusions: Our preliminary results using the 3D EOC perfused, PDMS bioreactor model showed increased EOC cell growth overtime, while maintaining original EOC histology. Moreover, our results suggest that this model could provide a novel platform to study therapeutic interventions in EOC. Our ultimate goal is to implement ovarian cancer microenvironment components (e.g. immune cells) into bioreactor system to study different drug treatments to better determine drug candidate’s translational efficacy.
Benchmarking of commercially available CHO cell culture media for antibody production