Accelerating Functional Live Single-Cell Research

Single-cell analysis is a ubiquitous laboratory technique that allows researchers to probe the myriad biomolecular states of cells. Single-cell assays can reveal gene and protein expression patterns, cell surface markers, and other important metrics that define a cell’s biomolecular condition at any given time.¹ However, traditional approaches do not address a key characteristic of cells—the fact that they are alive and dynamic in time and space. Cells function in relation to themselves, their neighbors, organs, systems, and the body as a whole.

Examining the Limitations of Static Single-Cell Assays

Cells exist in multitudes and each cell has a massive number of biomolecular signatures that researchers study. Single-cell analysis is a vital tool for cataloguing this heterogeneity. However, biomolecular variables are in constant flux and although traditional single-cell assays catalyze tremendous scientific progress, they only allow researchers to infer the complex function of cells at the discrete moment that the assay is performed. As a result, real-time information about the ever-changing function of cells is missing, which limits the scientific understanding of widespread metabolic, secretory, intercellular, genomic, and transcriptomic cellular activity.

To compensate for this, researchers often perform multiple assays to fine tune their understanding of cellular function. While this may provide incrementally more information, the additional time and resources can create workflow bottlenecks, and the end result is still an inference of biomolecular activity gathered from snapshots in time. This is particularly important for highly dynamic cells whose activity fluctuates rapidly from moment to moment, such as immune cells.

Researchers engaged in antibody and immune profiling, cell therapy, infectious diseases, immuno-oncology, and autoimmune research are especially keen on finding innovative and precise approaches that enable deep probing of cellular function at the single cell level. Novel functional live single-cell technologies can help scientists gain insight into dynamic biomolecular processes that have far reaching implications for T cell profiling, antibody discovery, and immunotherapy.

Focusing on Function

Bruker Cellular Analysis’s Beacon Discovery™ is a game-changing platform that allows scientists to keep track of gene and protein expression as well as how and when immune cells do their jobs, including cytokine and antibody secretion; target elimination; intercellular communication; antigen binding, blocking, and internalization; and cell surface marker expression. The assays are performed in NanoPens, nanoliter-sized chambers that enable automation, scalability, precision, and on- and off-chip interrogations.

This user-friendly, economical benchtop system takes advantage of proprietary optofluidics technology and OptoSelect® microfluidic chips to help scientists perform live, bulk, single cell functional analysis in real time. The platform is compact, accessible, flexible, and has a proven track record based on extensive validation and publication of the optofluidics system. Beacon Discovery™ enables direct observation of cellular behavior with the precision and flexibility to cover multimodal and temporal functional responses for up to several days. Such comprehensive assessment of immune cells provides researchers with the power to connect single cell function, phenotype, and genomics for a wide range of translational research applications related to biomarker and CAR/TCR discovery, antibody profiling and discovery, cell therapy validation, T cell profiling, and beyond.