Fine time-course analysis of the tumor-spheroid drug response by integrated system of dynamic OCT and cell cultivation

Time-course investigations of the tumor spheroid drug-response are important for the anti-cancer drug testing. Although OCT and dynamic OCT showed their potential for tumor spheroid evaluation, they were not widely used for longitudinal imaging. It is because of the difficulty of integrating the OCT devices into the incubators. Here, we enabled longitudinal imaging of spheroids by integrating a small-cultivation-chamber into DOCT microscope. Using our developed system, we demonstrate fine time-course analysis of tumor spheroid’s drug-response over 100 hours during incubation with two anticancer drugs: doxorubicin and paclitaxel. The characteristic transition time-points in the spheroid morphology and DOCT signals were revealed.