Human mammary cancer cell lines and other epithelial cells cultured as organoid tissue in lenticular pouches of reinforced collagen membranes.

A system has been developed for the culture of cells that provides conditions favoring the formation of tissues comparable to conditions existing in nature. The culture chamber is a lens-shaped pouch composed of two thin-walled, reinforced, waffled collagen membranes facing each other. The chamber is immersed in medium in a closed transparent container and incubated on a rocker. On histologic study, after days to weeks in culture, human mammary cancer cell lines BT-20, MCF-7, MDA-231, MDA-468, and T47D grow in the chamber as distinctive structured epithelial tissue. Dog kidney cell line MDCK grows as a papillary adenocarcinoma and rat bladder cancer line NBT-II as an epidermoid carcinoma; cells from clinical effusion tumors produce distinct tissue. Changes in histologic phenotype may be driven by molecular changes at the level of the genome. Resulting alteration of the biochemical functions essential for the integrity of specific durable tissue organization should alter or reset the pattern of tissue organization and of biological behavior, including malignancy and response to cytotoxic chemicals. Lenticular pouch culture promises to be an effective tool for exploring the molecular changes associated with histogenesis and malignancy.