Oxygen Consuming Regions in EMT60/Ro Multicellular Tumour Spheroids Determined by Nonlinear Regression Analysis of Experimental PO2 Profiles

Malignant cells can be studied in vitro, in a tumour-like microenvironment, by growing multicellular tumour spheroids in culture (Sutherland, McCredie and Inch, 1971). Franko and Sutherland (1979) utilized diffusion theory to explain the viable rim thicknesses of spheroids measured histologically. Without PO2 profiles, however, an unequivocal interpretation of their results was not possible. Systematic studies of the PO2 profiles in spheroids have since been made with oxygen microelectrodes by several groups (Carlsson et al., 1979; Kaufman et al., 1981; Mueller-Klieser and Sutherland, 1982a,b). Based on these measurements, new analyses utilizing diffusion theory are being developed to chara…