2D v 3D Cell Culture
The benefits of 3D cell culture over conventional 2D culture are widely accepted in the scientific community. Traditional 2D cell culture methods subject cells to an un-physiological architectural state. When cultured in 2D, mammalian cells assume a bipolar state with a basal and apical side. In order to tackle this unnatural morphology, cytoskeletal re-modelling takes place and the subsequent ultrastructure of the cell is greatly altered (Ravi et al., 2015). Cells cultured in 2D also have unlimited access to oxygen, nutrients and metabolites –which is not the case in their respective tissues in vivo. These limitations ultimately mean those laboratories undertaking assays on cells in this unnatural environment yield less reliable results in vitro.
3D cell culture creates a 3D architecture for cell growth, offering a closer knit and physiologically relevant environment. Growth of cells on 3D scaffolds promotes accurate cell-to-cell and cell-to-extracellular environment interactions with variable access to oxygen, nutrients and metabolites. Mammalian cells that sit within a more representative environment, reflective of their host tissue in vivo, exhibit more relevant gene expression, splicing topology and biomarkers in vitro, which in turn offers far greater reliability in terms of drug and toxicity modelling in the lab (Lv et al., 2016).
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