Ultrafast Single-Cell Level Enzymatic Tumor Profiling

Anal Chem. 2019 Jan 15;91(2):1277-1285. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.8b02576. Epub 2018 Nov 2.

Abstract

In the context of tumor analysis, the implementation of precision medicine requires on-time clinical measurements, which requires rapid large-scale single-cell screening that obtains cell population distributions and functions in tumors to determine disease progression for therapeutics. In this study, a high-throughput screening (HTS) platform integrating optical fluorescence detectors and a computational method was developed as a droplet-based microfluidic flow cytometer (Droplet-μFC) to comprehensively analyze multiple proteolytic activities of a patient-derived tumor (with ∼0.5-2 M cells) at single-cell resolution within 2 h. The data-driven analytical method identified distinct cell types and status through protease profiling with high precision. Multiple protease activities of single cells harvested from a tumor were thus determined with a throughput of ∼100 cells per second. This platform was used to screen protease activities of a wide range of cell types, forming a library. With the development of advanced computational clustering and cell mapping, rapid quantitative tumor profiling with a comprehensive description of cell population distributions and functions could be obtained for clinical treatments.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Antineoplastic Agents
  • Cell Line, Tumor
  • Databases, Factual
  • Erlotinib Hydrochloride / pharmacology
  • Flow Cytometry / methods*
  • Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer
  • Fluorescent Dyes / metabolism
  • High-Throughput Screening Assays
  • Humans
  • Lab-On-A-Chip Devices
  • Mice
  • Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / methods*
  • Neoplasms / enzymology*
  • Neoplasms / pathology
  • Oligopeptides / metabolism
  • Peptide Hydrolases / analysis*
  • Peptide Hydrolases / metabolism
  • Proteolysis
  • Single-Cell Analysis / methods

Substances

  • Antineoplastic Agents
  • Fluorescent Dyes
  • Oligopeptides
  • Erlotinib Hydrochloride
  • Peptide Hydrolases