Table 1.

Comparison of 2DCC and 3DCC (3, 6, 16–19).

	2DCC	3DCC
Morphology	Loss of shape changes and polarization	Actual shape form
Gene expression	To be altered or modified by planar culture or genes	Better representation of tumor gene expression in vivo
TME	None	Mimics TME in tumor tissue
Oxygen, nutrients, signaling molecular gradients in TME	None	Controlled by sphere size and molecular osmotic migration rate
Heterogeneity of tumor	Base	Better approximated by various molecular gradients in the TME
Angiogenesis	Only observational	Functional angiogenesis
Cost	Low	High
Multicellular explore	Suitable for immune response studies	Suitable for cell co-culture