ArticleeLife2021
Quantitative analysis of tumour spheroid structure.
Article in eLife, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed.
- Spheroid cultures reveal cancer stem cell enrichment and distinct chemotherapeutic response in triple-negative breast cancer.BMC cancer · 2026Article
- Tubulin autoregulation tunes microtubule dynamics to support multicellular architecture and viability.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Evaluation of a human 3D multi-spheroid model derived from SH-SY5Y cells for cytotoxicity testing.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- A statistically rigorous multi-scale texture analysis framework for 3D spheroid characterization: temporal autocorrelation correction and molecular validation.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Article
- Stress-dependent growth in breast cancer arises from a mechano-osmotic coupling and cell-sizing checkpoint.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Mechano-Organ-on-Chip for Cancer Research.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- A Phenotype-Structured PDE Framework for Investigating the Role of Hypoxic Memory on Tumor Invasion under Cyclic Hypoxia.Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2026Article
- A phenotype-structured PDE framework for investigating the role of hypoxic memory on tumor invasion under cyclic hypoxia.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Formulation Strategies for Immunomodulatory Natural Products in 3D Tumor Spheroids and Organoids: Current Challenges and Emerging Solutions.Pharmaceutics · 2025Review
- Interfacial Stress Regulates Plasticity and Drug Resistance at the Breast Cancer-Host Interface.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Surface tension-driven boundary growth in tumour spheroids.Interface focus · 2025Article
- Getting Blood out of a Stone: Vascularization via Spheroids and Organoids in 3D Bioprinting.Cells · 2025Review
- Mimicking the Complexity of Solid Tumors: How Spheroids Could Advance Cancer Preclinical Transformative Approaches.Cancers · 2025Article
- Article
- Principles of Hanging Drop Method (Spheroid Formation) in Cell Culture.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2025Article
- Time-course characterization of whole-transcriptome dynamics of HepG2/C3A spheroids and its toxicological implications.Toxicology letters · 2024Article
- Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Monitoring of Tryptophan Dynamics in 3D Pancreatic Tumor Models.ACS sensors · 2024Article
- Making Predictions Using Poorly Identified Mathematical Models.Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Tumour spheroids are common in vitro experimental models of avascular tumour growth. Compared with traditional two-dimensional culture, tumour spheroids more closely mimic the avascular tumour microenvironment where spatial differences in nutrient availability strongly influence growth. We show that spheroids initiated using significantly different numbers of cells grow to similar limiting sizes, suggesting that avascular tumours have a limiting structure; in agreement with untested predictions of classical mathematical models of tumour spheroids. We develop a novel mathematical and statistical framework to study the structure of tumour spheroids seeded from cells transduced with fluorescent cell cycle indicators, enabling us to discriminate between arrested and cycling cells and identify an arrested region. Our analysis shows that transient spheroid structure is independent of initial spheroid size, and the limiting structure can be independent of seeding density. Standard experimental protocols compare spheroid size as a function of time; however, our analysis suggests that comparing spheroid structure as a function of overall size produces results that are relatively insensitive to variability in spheroid size. Our experimental observations are made using two melanoma cell lines, but our modelling framework applies across a wide range of spheroid culture conditions and cell lines.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.