Evaluation of the response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy of breast cancer cells cultured in 3D bioprinted models
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- This master’s thesis investigates the response of breast cancer cells to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in 3D bioprinted models. Two breast cancer cell lines, MCF-7 and ZR-75.1, were cultured in two hydrogels with distinct compositions and mechanical properties: A1G7 and HAMA1/GelMA7. Cellular response was assessed using two complementary readouts: metabolic activity measured with the CellTiter-Glo® assay and gene expression analysed by RT-qPCR. In untreated conditions, both cell lines showed increasing metabolic activity over time, with a more pronounced increase in A1G7 than in HAMA1/GelMA7, highlighting a matrix-dependent effect on cell behaviour. NAC treatment induced a marked decrease in metabolic activity in all cell line–hydrogel combinations, with residual activity reaching approximately 10–20% at day 14. Differences between matrices were more apparent at day 10 but were not consistently maintained at day 14. The transcriptional analysis was strongly limited by variability in RNA extraction quality from the 3D constructs, as reflected by heterogeneous NanoDrop™ profiles and RPL13A Ct values. After quality control, the number of exploitable samples, particularly in treated conditions, was insufficient to reliably assess the transcriptional response to NAC. Overall, this work highlights the potential of 3D bioprinted breast cancer models for studying treatment response while emphasizing the importance of further optimizing RNA extraction and analytical protocols.