Morphological analysis of human umbilical vein endothelial cells co-cultured with ovarian cancer cells in 3D: An oncogenic angiogenesis assay
Fig 5
Semi-automated image analysis comparing morphologies of different in vitro models.
(A) Comparison of 3D on-top and 3D sandwich co-culture of OVCAR8 and HUVECs with regard to: (i) Total spheroid areas in μm2 and (ii) Mean tubule areas. (B) Comparison of 3D mono-culture of OVCAR8 and 3D co-culture of HUVECs and OVCAR8 in terms of: (i) Total spheroid areas in μm2 and (ii) Mean spheroid areas in μm2. (C) Angiogenesis parameter comparisons for 3D on-top and 3D sandwich co-culture of OVCAR8 and HUVECs over 10 days for: (i) Total tubule areas and (ii) Branching points. Results are presented as (mean ± SD), and are considered significantly different when p < 0.05 based on Student’s t-test (marked as ‘*’ in the figures showing significant difference between the compared models on the same day). Note that since HUVECs mono-culture lost their tubule network at day 2 and eventually lost signs of living cells over longer term culture (Fig 2(A)), only mono-culture of cancer cell OVCAR8 and co-culture of OVCAR8 and HUVECs were compared here over 10 days of culture.