Personalized Medicine-Based Approach to Model Patterns of Chemoresistance and Tumor Recurrence Using Ovarian Cancer Stem Cell Spheroids.

Chemoresistant ovarian cancers grow in suspension within the ascites fluid. To screen the effect of chemotherapeutics and biologics on resistant ovarian cancers with a personalized basis, we developed a 3D hanging drop spheroid platform. We initiated spheroids with primary aldehyde dehydrogenase-positive (ALDH) CD133 ovarian cancer stem cells (OvCSC) from different patient samples and demonstrated that stem cell progeny from harvested spheroids was similar to the primary tumor.