Author Spotlight: Development of a Scaffold-Free Acoustic Assembly Method for High-Quality 3D Cell Spheroid Culture

3D in vitro culture models, like cell spheroids, have been widely used in the fields of tissue engineering, disease modeling, and drug screening. Our research focuses on developing and invest per engineering method to fabricate spheroids or other 3D in vitro culture models with high quality for diverse biological studies. In the current protocol, the spheroids grew within the GelMA scaffold and are retrieved at the final layback, dissolving the scaffold, causing additional procedures.

We will try to acoustically assemble cell aggregates in a cultural medium to enable them to grow within spheroids without scaffold. Compared to magnetic assembly techniques, acoustic waves can directly assemble cells in a label-free manner without potential toxic effects on cells. Besides, our protocol enables cell spheroids to be assembled in a three-dimensional array, substantially increasing throughput.