Genome-wide pooled CRISPR screening in neurospheres

Spheroid culture systems have allowed in vitro propagation of cells unable to grow in canonical cell culturing conditions, and may capture cellular contexts that model tumor growth better than current model systems. The insights gleaned from genome-wide clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) screening of thousands of cancer cell lines grown in conventional culture conditions illustrate the value of such CRISPR pooled screens. It is clear that similar genome-wide CRISPR screens of three-dimensional spheroid cultures will be important for future biological discovery. Here, we present a protocol for genome-wide CRISPR screening of three-dimensional neurospheres. While many in-depth protocols and discussions have been published for more typical cell lines, few detailed protocols are currently available in the literature for genome-wide screening in spheroidal cell lines. For those who want to screen such cell lines, and particularly neurospheres, we provide a step-by-step description of assay development tests to be performed before screening, as well as for the screen itself. We highlight considerations of variables that make these screens distinct from, or similar to, typical nonspheroid cell lines throughout. Finally, we illustrate typical outcomes of neurosphere genome-wide screens, and how neurosphere screens typically produce slightly more heterogeneous signal distributions than more canonical cancer cell lines. Completion of this entire protocol will take 8–12 weeks from the initial assay development tests to deconvolution of the sequencing data.