SINGLE CELL PAIRING MICROFLUIDIC APPLICATION FOR STUDYING IMMUNE MEDIATED KILLING WHEN PAIRED WITH TUMOUR CELLS

Abstract

Interactions between tumour and immune cells have been noted to elicit a huge variation of responses among patients undergoing cancer immunotherapy. However, current understanding of tumour to cancer interaction is still limited. I incorporated microfluidics to look at tumour-immune cell interaction at the single cell level and ultimately quantify immune cell-mediated killing. I trapped head and neck tumour cells from various patient-derived cell lines with varying numbers of natural killer cells and established a live-cell quantitative imaging assay to track the viability of the tumour cells longitudinally after a 24-hour co-culture. I then performed various statistical tests to identify differential responses between the cell types on-chip and between platforms. Differences in cell viability between cell types on-chip and platforms were observed. I believe that this platform will be a useful tool in allowing researchers to look objectively at tumour-immune cell interactions and will play a role in personalized cancer immunotherapy.