Discussion

Immunotherapy offers great clinical potential, especially in the area of cancer treatment. Traditional in vitro assay approaches for immune/cancer cell interactions involve non-image based end point measures where the contribution of target and effector cell types to the final readout is often unclear, with limited information around the temporal nature of events. In this presentation we will introduce a range of mono and co-culture models of tumour and effector cells to track immune cell function using time-lapse kinetic live cell imaging on IncuCyte Zoom™. Specifically, apoptosis and tumour cell count assays for T cell killing (ADCC and CDC) and proliferation and clustering assays for immune cells will be described. These assay examples will be used to illustrate the added value of kinetic imaging approaches for validating the underlying biology and for isolating the specific contributions of target and effector cells in more complex model systems.