title: A screen for short-range paracrine interactions.
abstract: Conventional methods for studying paracrine signaling in vitro may not be sensitive to short-range effects resulting from signal dilution or decay. We employ a microfabricated culture substrate to maintain two cell populations in microscale proximity. Individual populations can be quickly retrieved for cell-specific readouts by standard high-throughput assays. We show that this platform is sensitive to short-range interactions that are not detectable by common methods such as conditioned media transfer or porous cell culture inserts, as revealed by gene expression changes in a tumor-stromal crosstalk model. In addition, we are able to detect population-specific gene expression changes that would have been masked in mixed co-cultures. We thus demonstrate a tool for investigating an important class of intercellular communication that may be overlooked in conventional biological studies.
authors: Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-2715, USA. eehui@uci.edu.
authors: K H
authors: KH
authors: Spencer
authors: M Y
authors: MY
authors: Kim
authors: C C W
authors: CC
authors: Hughes
authors: E E
authors: EE
authors: Hui
mesh_terms: D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D018920:Coculture Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D005347:Fibroblasts; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D019899:Paracrine Communication / Q000502:physiology*; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D019098:Telomerase / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: C509186:TERT protein, human; D019098:Telomerase