Summary
Published in Journal of Mass Spectrometry (2020), this peer-reviewed study used 3D Petri Dish® micro-molds to form scaffold-free 3D microtissues. Full citation: Johnson, Jillian, et al. Sample preparation strategies for high‐throughput mass spectrometry imaging of primary tumor organoids
Sample preparation strategies for high‐throughput mass spectrometry imaging of primary tumor organoids
Research Overview
Patient-derived 3D organoids are promising tools for understanding patient heterogeneity and chemotherapy response, and pairing them with mass spectrometry imaging gives a label-free way to characterize drug penetration, patient-specific response, and drug biotransformation. The catch is that the extracellular matrices used to grow tumor organoids generate small-molecule background signal during imaging.
This study developed a method to isolate 3D human tumor organoids from Matrigel into gelatin microarrays compatible with mass spectrometry, enabling high-throughput imaging analysis. Aligning multiple organoids in the same z-axis was essential so they could be sectioned together with reproducible sample preparation on a single slide.
Key Discoveries
- Method to move tumor organoids out of Matrigel into MS-compatible gelatin microarrays
- Removes the small-molecule background that ECM produces during mass spectrometry imaging
- Z-axis alignment of many organoids allows joint sectioning and reproducible high-throughput analysis
