Evaluation of Single-Cell Cytokine Secretion and Cell-Cell Interactions with a Hierarchical Loading Microwell Chip

Abstract

Summary: Comprehensive evaluation of single T cell functions such as cytokine secretion and cytolysis of target cells is greatly needed in adoptive cell therapy (ACT) but has never been fully fulfilled by current approaches. Herein, we develop a hierarchical loading microwell chip (HL-Chip) that aligns multiple cells and functionalized beads in a high-throughput microwell array with single-cell/bead precision based on size differences. We demonstrate the potential of the HL-Chip in evaluating single T cell functions by three applications: high-throughput longitudinal secretory profiling of single T cells, large-scale evaluation of cytolytic activity of single T cells, and integrated T cell-tumor cell interactions. The HL-Chip is a simple and robust technology that constructs arrays of defined cell/object combinations for multiple measurements and material retrieval. : Zhou et al. describe the hierarchical loading microwell chip, which enables cell/bead pairing with high efficiency in a high-throughput manner. They conduct coupled measurements of cytotoxicity and cytokine secretion from single lymphocytes and uncover the linkage of lymphocytes’ functions together with the cell behavior. Keywords: microfluidics, single cell, cell-bead pairing, T cell function, cytokine detection, cell-cell interaction, cytotoxicity, adoptive cell therapy