COMBINING MULTIPLEX CELL MICROPATTERNING AND MICROFLUIDICS TO STUDY CELL-CELL COMMUNICATION IN MELANOMA

Cell-cell communication (CCC) plays a vital role in various biological processes (e.g.development, aging, and disease progression).It occurs through different extrinsic mechanisms, categorized as direct contact-based and secreted factor-based communication, resulting in modifications of the intrinsic mechanisms of the interacting cells (e.g.gene transcription, protein and lipid content).In vitro co-cultures with model cell lines are highly relevant to study CCC, however, conventional workflows do not allow to precisely position different cell types and as such unravel the extrinsic CCC mechanisms.In this context, multiplex cell patterning is of high interest, yet the available approaches are not compatible with multi-omics readouts to further study the intrinsic CCC mechanisms[1-5].