Multiparameter cell characterization using a novel optofluidic platform for defining phenotypic and genotypic intratumor heterogeneity in living cells.. Homo sapiens

The genetic and functional complexity inherent in bulk tumor, comprised of heterogeneous cellular clones, is now appreciated to exist due to rapid advances in sequencing technologies but as yet remains uncharted and unexplored. As a unique integrated approach to characterizing tumor heterogeneity, we demonstrate the multifaceted capabilities of a novel optofluidic cell analysis technology to enable single-cell manipulation of living cells and their culture, assay and analysis of growth kinetics and protein expression. We do so using integrated single-cell genetic profiling and multilayered analysis of ovarian cancer patient-derived tumor and immortalized cancer cell lines and demonstrate that this approach reveals heterogeneity in both cell growth and protein expression phenotype, as well as genotype of these cell populations. This novel approach on a highly lethal cancer type in high grade serous ovarian cancer demonstrates our ability to characterize linked phenotypic and genotypic data at single cell resolution to help unravel the signaling networks controlling the evolution of cancer and contribute to the development of novel experimental pipelines to facilitate precision medicine in many fields, including oncology.