Tethered primary hepatocyte spheroids on polystyrene multi-well plates for high-throughput drug safety testing.

Hepatocyte spheroids are useful models for mimicking liver phenotypes in vitro because of their three-dimensionality. However, the lack of a biomaterial platform which allows the facile manipulation of spheroid cultures on a large scale severely limits their application in automated high-throughput drug safety testing. In addition, there is not yet a robust way of controlling spheroid size, homogeneity and integrity during extended culture.