Yvonne J. Yamanaka and Xiaosai Yao
Love Lab and Wittrup Lab, Koch Institute
Epi-Fluorescence Micrograph

"This image is one frame of a 4 hour movie, which tracks the interaction dynamics between tumor cells (green) and fibroblasts (red). The cells are loaded on an array of 50 µm x 50 µm x 50 µm microwells. In this image 49 microwells are visible; the entire 3” x 1” array contains 84,672 microwells. 

We collected these movies to learn how tumor cell interactions with fibroblasts alter the motility of the tumor cells. Specifically, we were interested in monitoring the movements of individual tumor cell – fibroblast pairs and identifying any particularly motile outliers in the population. By using the microwell arrays we were able to isolate and monitor hundreds of interacting tumor cell – fibroblast pairs."