Phenomics demonstrates cytokines additive induction of epithelial to mesenchymal transition

Abstract

Epithelial to Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) is highly plastic with a program where cells lose adhesion and become more motile. EMT heterogeneity is one of the factors for disease progression and chemoresistance in cancer. Omics characterizations are costly and challenging to use. We developed single cell phenomics with easy to use wide-field fluorescence microscopy. We analyse over 70000 cells and combined 51 features. Our simplistic pipeline allows efficient tracking of EMT plasticity, with a single statistical metric. We discriminate four high EMT plasticity cancer cell lines along the EMT spectrum. We test two cytokines, inducing EMT in all cell lines, alone or in combination. The single cell EMT metrics demonstrate the additive effect of cytokines combination on EMT independently of cell line EMT spectrum. Single cell phenomics is uniquely suited to characterize the cellular heterogeneity in response to complex microenvironment, and show potential for drug testing assays.