Abstract
Lung malignancies accounted for 11% of cancers worldwide in 2020 and remained the leading cause of cancer deaths. About 80% of lung cancers belong to non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which is characterized by extremely high clonal and morphological heterogeneity of tumors and development of multidrug resistance. The improvement of current therapeutic strategies includes several directions. First, increasing knowledge in cancer biology results in better understanding of the mechanisms underlying malignant transformation, alterations in signal transduction, and crosstalk between cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment, including immune cells. In turn, it leads to the discovery of important molecular targets in cancer development, which might be affected pharmaceutically. The second direction focuses on the screening of novel drug candidates, synthetic or from natural sources. Finally, “personalization” of a therapeutic strategy enables maximal damage to the tumor of a patient. The personalization of treatment can be based on the drug screening performed using patient-derived tumor xenografts or in vitro patient-derived cell models. 3D multicellular cancer spheroids, generated from cancer cell lines or tumor-isolated cells, seem to be a helpful tool for the improvement of current NSCLC therapies. Spheroids are used as a tumor-mimicking in vitro model for screening of novel drugs, analysis of intercellular interactions, and oncogenic cell signaling. Moreover, several studies with tumor-derived spheroids suggest this model for the choice of “personalized” therapy. Here we aim to give an overview of the different applications of NSCLC spheroids and discuss the potential contribution of the spheroid model to the development of anticancer strategies.
Highlights
Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with 25% 5-year survival rate [1] remains an intractable type of cancer
As a part of the epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT), the prevalence of N-cadherins significantly contributes to RhoA signaling activation that mediates cell locomotion and invasiveness [10] and is associated with poor prognosis in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) [11]
Besides hypoxic core formation, the growth of the spheroids leads to the deposition of extracellular matrix (ECM) components, which is an important hallmark of NSCLC tumors
Summary
Increasing knowledge in cancer biology results in better understanding of the mechanisms underlying malignant transformation, alterations in signal transduction, and crosstalk between cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment, including immune cells. It leads to the discovery of important molecular targets in cancer development, which might be affected pharmaceutically. 3D multicellular cancer spheroids, generated from cancer cell lines or tumor-isolated cells, seem to be a helpful tool for the improvement of current NSCLC therapies. Spheroids are used as a tumor-mimicking in vitro model for screening of novel drugs, analysis of intercellular interactions, and oncogenic cell signaling.
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