Scaling Human-Relevant Oncology Testing: OncoPro Tumoroids on ScreenIn3D’s UpScale Platform

The United States National Institutes of Health has prioritized human cell-based in vitro approaches to “model human disease and capture human variability and patient-specific characteristics,” complementing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s goals to use advanced in vitro assays as a New Approach Methodology (NAM) that could reduce animal testing. Patient-derived tumoroids, also called cancer organoids, retain many genetic and phenotypic features of patient tumors, making them highly relevant human models for translational oncology. Use of standardized tumoroid culture methods with screening technologies that take advantage of the multicellular, 3D nature of tumoroids will be critical to fully exploit the promise and biological relevance of these cell models. To address this need, Thermo Fisher Scientific is working with ScreenIn3D® to incorporate OncoPro medium-derived tumoroids in microfluidic devices designed for screening compounds and cell and gene therapies on 3D tumoroids, organoids, and spheroid co-cultures.

New Approach Methodologies (NAMs): Advancements in 3D Cancer Organoid Screening

Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Gibco OncoPro Tumoroid Culture Medium Kit and OncoPro Tumoroid Cell Lines simplify and standardize tumoroid culture using an off-the-shelf, serum-free system to accelerate incorporation into NAMs. Tumoroids cultured in OncoPro medium exhibit consistent growth rates, mutations, and gene expression profiles across medium production lots and research sites¹. ScreenIn3D’s UpScale^3D® platform is a microfluidic, lab-on-a-chip system that miniaturizes complex 3D assays² into perfused culture channels containing arrays of microwells, allowing researchers to form hundreds to thousands of discrete tumoroids across multiplexed experimental conditions in a single experiment. Perfusion supports longer-term culture under controlled microenvironmental conditions, and microfluidic gradient dosing enables efficient dose–response and drug combination testing with higher data density than conventional plate formats.

In initial experiments demonstrating how tumoroids can be combined with microfluidic platforms for drug screening experiments, patient-derived colorectal and ovarian cancer cells were used to form tumoroids within the UpScale^3D® platform. Tumoroid sensitivity to standard of care chemotherapeutic compounds in single-drugs and combination therapy was quantified from both patient-derived, freshly expanded and banked cells, supporting reproducible results.

Microfluidic drug screening that incorporates patient-derived tumoroid cells directly supports in vitro assays with human relevance, reproducibility through standardization, and efficient evidence generation that can reduce reliance on animal studies. The NAM workflow for oncology being developed here could accelerate the development of new small molecules, biologics, and cell and gene therapies for cancer treatment.

Learn more about our OncoPro Tumoroid Culture Medium Kit solution and New Approach Methodologies

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References

1. Paul, C.D. et al. Long-term maintenance of patient-specific characteristics in tumoroids from six cancer indications. Scientific Reports, 15: 3933 (2025).
2. Paterson K. et al. Assessment of CAR-T mediated and targeted cytotoxicity in 3D microfluidic TBNC co-culture models for combination therapy. IEEE OJEMB, 3: 86-95 (2022).

 For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.