Biological tissue consists of populations of cells exhibiting different responses to pharmacological stimuli. To probe the heterogeneity of cell function, we propose a multiplexed approach based on real-time imaging of the secondary messenger levels within each cell of the tissue, followed by extraction of the changes of single-cell fluorescence over time. By utilizing a piecewise baseline correction, we were able to quantify the effects of multiple pharmacological stimuli added and removed sequentially to pancreatic islets of Langerhans, thereby performing a deep functional profiling for each cell within the islet. Cluster analysis based on the functional profile demonstrated dose-dependent changes in statistical inter-relationships between islet cell populations. We therefore believe that the functional cytometric approach can be used for routine quantitative profiling of the tissue for drug screening or pathological testing.
Keywords: antidiabetic drugs; baseline correction; cell profiling; fluorescence; time-lapse imaging.