Time-course tracking of physical proximity and its effect on gene expression for elucidating single NK and cancer cell interactions using a microfluidic platform

We report a platform that combines the capture, co-incubation, time-lapse imaging, and gene expression profiling of doublets using the microfluidic integrated fluidic circuit (IFC) which could be used for real-time physical and transcriptional cell-cell interaction quantification. The temporal variations in natural killer (NK) - triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) cell distances were tracked and compared with terminally-profiled cellular transcriptomes. The results showed the time-bound activities of regulatory modules and alluded to the existence of transcriptional memory. Our experimental and bioinformatic approaches serve as a proof of concept for interrogating cell interactions at doublet resolution, which can be applicable across different cancer types. Overall design: Effect of physical proximity on transcriptomic signatures during single NK and cancer cell interactions on a microfluidic platform