Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, United States.
Anal Chem. 2013 May 21;85(10):4991-7. doi: 10.1021/ac4002029. Epub 2013 May 2.
Microfluidic systems show great promise for single-cell analysis; however, as these technologies mature, their utility must be validated by studies of biologically relevant processes. An important biomedical application of these systems is characterization of tumor cell heterogeneity. In this work, we used a robust microfluidic platform to explore the heterogeneity of enzyme activity in single cells treated with a chemotherapeutic drug. Using chemical cytometry, we measured peptide degradation in the U937 acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cell line in the presence and absence of the aminopeptidase inhibitor Tosedostat (CHR-2797). The analysis of 99 untreated cells revealed rapid and consistent degradation of the peptide reporter within 20 min of loading. Results from drug-treated cells showed inhibited, but ongoing degradation of the reporter. Because the device operates at an average sustained throughput of 37 ± 7 cells/h, we were able to sample cells over the course of this time-dependent degradation. In data from 498 individual drug-treated cells, we found a linear dependence of degradation rate on amount of substrate loaded superimposed upon substantial heterogeneity in peptide processing in response to inhibitor treatment. Importantly, these data demonstrated the potential of microfluidic systems to sample biologically relevant analytes and time-dependent processes in large numbers of single cells.
微流控系统在单细胞分析方面显示出巨大的潜力;然而,随着这些技术的成熟,其应用必须通过对生物相关过程的研究来验证。这些系统的一个重要的生物医学应用是对肿瘤细胞异质性进行特征描述。在这项工作中,我们使用了一个强大的微流控平台来探索用化疗药物处理的单个细胞中酶活性的异质性。我们使用化学细胞术测量了在存在和不存在氨肽酶抑制剂 Tosedostat(CHR-2797)的情况下,急性髓系白血病(AML)细胞系 U937 中肽的降解。对 99 个未处理的细胞进行分析表明,在加载后 20 分钟内,肽报告子迅速且一致地降解。来自药物处理细胞的结果显示报告子的降解受到抑制,但仍在继续。由于该设备的平均持续吞吐量为 37 ± 7 个/小时,我们能够在这段时间依赖性降解过程中对细胞进行采样。在来自 498 个单独药物处理的细胞的数据中,我们发现降解率与加载的底物量之间存在线性关系,这与抑制剂处理对肽处理的大量异质性叠加在一起。重要的是,这些数据表明微流控系统具有在大量单个细胞中采样生物相关分析物和时间依赖性过程的潜力。