MUNICH — A peer-reviewed study published in RSC Advances detailed the CellTrap microfluidic platform. The platform is designed to track individual immune and cancer cell interactions over time using standard laboratory equipment.

CellTrap uses a microfluidic chip with a main channel that branches into multiple pathways. These branching pathways lead to 1024 small trapping chambers, which draw cells into fixed positions. The system allows individual immune cells and cancer cells to be brought together in these chambers, where they can be observed for periods of up to 14 hours using time-lapse microscopy.

Professor Ghulam Destgeer said, "With CellTrap, we can not only measure whether immune cells kill cancer cells, but also track when and under what conditions this occurs." "This matters, because immune responses can vary so much from one cell to the next." Destgeer added, "And we deliberately kept the platform simple and affordable: it runs on a standard fluorescence microscope of the kind most labs already have, with no specialised equipment."

The system can be configured to test cancer cells alone, immune cells alone, or varying ratios of both cell types. Initial experiments conducted with a glioblastoma cell line indicated that a single cancer cell experienced increased targeting frequency and prolonged engagement when multiple immune cells were present. Early activation signals in immune cells frequently predict subsequent damaging effects on target cells.

The platform facilitates the observation of the relationship between early cellular reactions and later outcomes within identical cell-cell interactions. Researchers tested the platform using chronic myeloid leukaemia and adenocarcinoma cell lines in addition to glioblastoma. Destgeer said, "The more we learn about what actually happens between individual cells, the better we can compare treatment strategies and develop new ones." He added, "And although we focused on immune and cancer cells, the platform isn't limited to them - almost any combination of cells can be loaded and observed in the chip."