Innovative tools for 3D cell culture by Idylle

Easy growing of spheroids with Stampwell U-Shape

Principle
Stampwell U-Shape is a stamp designed to easily create U-bottom wells in any type of hydrogels such as agarose, alginate, phytagel, methycellulose, etc. This forms an array of non-adherent wells in which cell suspension can be loaded to watch cell aggregate in individual 3D cell structures.
The same stamp with flat bottom wells, called Stampwell V-shape, has been designed to be able to better image the spheroids.

Key Features

• Samples immobilized on a similar focal plane
• Compatible with a wide variety of hydrogels
• Reusable
• Cost-Saving compared to low-adherent well-plates such as ULA

Developed by
Gaëlle Recher and Camille Douillet (CNRS – Université de Bordeaux, France)
Alessandri K, Andrique L, Feyeux M, Bikfalvi A, Nassoy P, Recher G. All-in-one 3D printed microscopy chamber for multidimensional imaging, the UniverSlide. Sci Rep. 2017 Feb 10;7:42378. doi: 10.1038/srep42378. PMID: 28186188; PMCID: PMC5301227.

Growing uniformly-sized spheroids with SpheroTribe

Principle
SpheroTribe is a concentrated polymer-based solution that increases the medium viscosity, therefore favouring cell-cell contacts. It offers a simple method to generate homogeneous 3D cell structures with increased control over their shape, minimizing variability between samples and improving the consistency of your downstream experiments such as migration/invasion assays, immunostaining, drug screening or in vivo implantation experiments. SpheroTribe is particularly useful to boost aggregation when working with challenging cells.

Key features
• Cell aggregation booster
• Increased homogeneity
• Easy to use : simply dilute it in your culture media
• No need to work on ice

Developed by
Guyon, J., Andrique, L., Pujol, N., Røsland, G. V., Recher, G., Bikfalvi, A., & Daubon, T.

AgarSqueezer to mimic the compression of a real cell environment

AgarSqueezer is an innovative cell culture system to grow and image cells under different confinement levels within a physiological rigidity range (1-150 kPa). The confinement system is based on molded agarose pillars, which enables an instant & homogeneous compression on cells, to study their response to short and long-term confinement up to 10 days.

Key features
• Homogeneous cell confinement
• Tunable pressure in a physiological range : 1-150 kPa
• Physiological rigidity
• Open access to the reservoir: Possibility to add drugs, and reagents. Easy medium renewal
• Long term confinement
• Fully compatible with multiple microscopy techniques
• Easy to recover coverslip with cells for subsequent molecular analysis: FACS, qPCR, Western-Blot, Immunofluorescence (possible in situ)

Developed by
Audrey Prunet, Gilles Simon, Hélène Delanoë-Ayari, Véronique Maguer-Satta and Charlotte Rivière.
Prunet, A., Lefort, S., Delanoë-Ayari, H., Laperrousaz, B., Simon, G., Barentin, C., Saci, S., Argoul, F., Guyot, B., Rieu, J. P., Gobert, S., Maguer-Satta, V., & Rivière, C. (2020). A new agarose-based microsystem to investigate cell response to prolonged confinement. Lab on a chip, 20(21), 4016–4030. https://doi.org/10.1039/d0lc00732c