3D printed scaffold to monitor hanging drops on inverted microscopes

Growing cells in 3D cell culture became a major field in cell biology over the last decade. Cells growing in a dimensionally unrestricted space spontaneously form organoids or spheroids that express cellular behavior different from cells growing on a plane surface. However, monitoring three dimensional spheroids on standard inverted microscopes proved difficult since hanging drops are often outside the focus range. Here I present the design and production of a cover slip tray by conventional additive printing (3D printing) able to fit into a single well of a six-well plate to enable the observation of hanging drop spheroids using inverted microscopes.