Formation of precisely composed cancer cell clusters using a cell assembly generator (CAGE) for studying paracrine signaling at single-cell resolution.

The function and behaviour of any given cell in a healthy tissue, or in a tumor, is affected by interactions with its neighboring cells. It is therefore important to create methods that allow for reconstruction of tissue niches in vitro for studies of cell-cell signaling and associated cell behaviour. To this end we created the cell assembly generator (CAGE), a microfluidic device which enables the organization of different cell types into precise cell clusters in a flow chamber compatible with high-resolution microscopy. In proof-of-concept paracrine signalling experiments, 4-cell clusters consisting of one pancreatic β-cell and three breast cancer cells were formed. It has previously been established that extracellular ATP induces calcium (Ca2+) release from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to the cytosol before it is cleared back into the ER via sarcoplasmic/ER Ca2+ ATPase (SERCA) pumps. Here, ATP release from the β-cell was stimulated by depolarization, and dynamic changes in Ca2+ levels in the adjacent cancer cells measured using imaging of the calcium indicator Fluo-4. We established that changes in the concentration of cytosolic Ca2+ in the cancer cells were proportional to the distance from the ATP-releasing β-cell. Additionally, we established that the relationship between distance and cytosolic calcium changes were dependent on Ca2+-release from the ER using 5-cell clusters composed of one β-cell, two untreated cancer cells and two cancer cells pretreated with Thapsigargin (to deplete the ER of Ca2+). These experiments show that the CAGE can be used to create exact cell clusters, which affords precise control for reductionist studies of cell-cell signalling and permits the formation of heterogenous cell models of specific tissue niches.