Development of multicellular spheroid for cell-based therapy

Abstract

Recent great advances in the preparation and culture of cells have expanded the expectation of therapeutic treatment using cells as "drugs". Cells play pivotal roles in biological processes through the interaction with surrounding cells and extracellular matrix. Therefore, multicellular spheroids, which can be obtained by culturing cells in three-dimension, have attracted great attention as an administration form that maximizes the function of cells. Here we summarize and compare several approaches to preparing multicellular spheroids and introduce our recent efforts on this subject.