A Method to sort heterogenous cell populations based on migration in 2D and 3D environments

ABSTRACT Whereas phenotypic assays such as Boyden chambers and wound healing assays can easily be employed to characterize the migratory potential of cells at the population level, few methods exist that can sort subpopulations of cells based on their migratory behaviour from an initial heterogeneous pool. In this paper, we present an approach to sort migratory cancer and immune cells based on their spontaneous migration in 2D and 3D microenvironments. Using this method, which is easy to implement and readily scalable, millions of live cells can be sorted based on their migratory characteristics and then subjected to downstream genomic, molecular and functional tests. We reveal that enrichment of the most migratory cytotoxic T lymphocytes yields a pool of cells with enhanced cytotoxicity against cancer cells. This new functional sorting method opens new avenues for the precise characterization of the mechanisms underlying hitherto unexplained heterogeneities in migratory phenotypes within a cell population, and for the targeted enrichment of the most potent migratory leukocytes in immunotherapies.