Research  ■

Microfluidic deep immune phenotyping (μDIP)

Immunotherapy, particularly adoptive cell therapy, harnesses a patient’s immune system to usher in a new era of personalized medicine, offering hope for curative treatments in severe illnesses. Despite its success, patient responses vary widely, with some experiencing nonhealing effects or unpredictable toxicity. These variations may arise from cell heterogeneity and interpatient differences in the infused cell product, highlighting the need for a comprehensive, multidimensional characterization of single cells at a systems level—yet no platform currently achieves this at scale. In this project, we developed a novel functional droplet barcoding technology for rapid microfluidic deep immune phenotyping (μDIP), enabling high-throughput, multiplexed analysis of single-cell phenotype and functionality, including cytokine secretion and cytotoxicity. Our platform simultaneously measures single-cell secretions, cytotoxic effector functions, and surface biomarkers, sorting functional immune cells at an unprecedented rate (~10^4 cells/sec). By uncovering the functional impact of molecular heterogeneity in immune systems, μDIP facilitates the rapid identification of tumor-specific immune cells and enhances cell manipulation for precision immunotherapy.

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