Abstract

Probing Cell-cell Communication with SERS Immunoprobes and Microfluidic Chip for Drug Discovery

Lei Wu, Student, Southeast University

Cell-cell communication is of fundamental importance in directing cellular functions, including cell growth, proliferation, apoptosis and responses to stimulation. Evidence of impaired intercellular communication is present in diseases such as cancer, immune disorders and diabetes. Accordingly, the development of in vitro platforms to investigate the underlying mechanisms of cell-cell communication is essential for understanding and treating such diseases. Herein, we combined SERS nanoprobes with microfluidic platformstoin situ probe the secretion-mediated intercellular communications. Specifically, we took the cancer-immune interactions as an example. On the one hand, the microfluidic chip links up the immune cells with tumor microenvironment to simulate the in vivo pathways for cancer-immune intercellular communications. On the other hand, gold@silver core-shell nanorods were employed to fabricate SERS immunoprobes, which were used for analyzing the cancer secretion dynamics during multicellular interactions. The adaption of SERS-assisted 3D barcode immunoassay to the microfluidic system not only enables quantitative, multiplex and in situdetection of cancer secretions a high sensitivity (1 ng/ml), but also achieves in vitro drug screening by evaluating the drug efficacy in regulating cancer-immune communications. It is expected that the fully integrated and highly automated SERS-microfluidic platform would become a powerful analytical tool for probing intercellular communications and drug screening.