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Vital Imaging of Multicellular Spheroids

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Confocal Microscopy

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 1075))

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Abstract

Cell behavior is significantly different in two-dimensional and three-dimensional culture conditions, and a number of methods have been developed to establish and study three-dimensional cellular arrays in vitro. When grown under nonadherent conditions, many types of cells form structures called multicellular spheroids (MCSs), which have been popular models to study cell behavior in a three-dimensional environment. The histoarchitecture of MCSs derived from malignant cells resembles that of tumors, and there is rapidly increasing interest in using these structures to more accurately understand the dynamics of cancer cells in situ, including their responses to chemotherapeutics. Confocal microscopy is an extremely useful method to investigate cell behavior in MCSs due to its ability to more clearly image fluorescent probes at some depth in three-dimensional structures. This chapter describes some basic approaches toward visualizing a variety of fluorescent probes in MCSs.

An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60761-847-8_18

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Paulo J. Oliveira

  2. Department of Biomedical Sciences, Mercer University School of Medicine, Savannah, GA, USA

    Edward L. Perkins

  3. Department of Anatomy, Microbiology and Pathology, University of Minnesota School of Medicine, Duluth, MN, USA

    Jon Holy

Authors
  1. Paulo J. Oliveira
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  2. Edward L. Perkins
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  3. Jon Holy
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wisconsin Dept. of Molecular Biology, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Stephen W. Paddock

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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Oliveira, P.J., Perkins, E.L., Holy, J. (2014). Vital Imaging of Multicellular Spheroids. In: Paddock, S. (eds) Confocal Microscopy. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1075. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60761-847-8_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60761-847-8_11

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  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-58829-351-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-60761-847-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Protocols

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