Understanding cancer growth using scalable 3D spheroid models: A major area of interest in the lab is to identify key drivers of cancer growth which can be potential therapeutic targets, individually or in combination. We have worked with a number of labs to establish tumor growth screens in cell lines, organoids, and mice, each of which has distinct advantages in either scalability or accuracy in recapitulating key features of tumors. We recently found that relatively simple modifications to cell culture, in which cancer cells are grown as 3D spheres, result in dramatic improvements in our ability to accurately model cancer. Phenotypes in 3D spheroids much more closely mirror those observed in actual tumors in mice or in patients, and yet retain the scalability needed to probe the enormous space of potential therapeutic target combinations. These models are also very easy to manipulate, and we are interested in understanding how varying nutrient conditions, extracellular matrix materials, and immune composition of simple in vitro models can be tuned to improve model accuracy.