Resources: Publications

CellCage™ technology enables high-throughput isolation of defined cell combinations to resolve the determinants of CAR T-mediated cytotoxicity

August 25, 2026

BioRxiv

Authors & Affiliations

CELLANOME: Richard G Yau^*, Shreya Deshmukh^*, Makenzie Sacca, Ria Gupta, Yanping Yang, Mehdi Mohseni,Liz Y Wu, Filiz Gorpe Yasar, Shan Sabri, Teresa Ai, Tarun K Khurana, Shawn Levy, Pier Federico Gherardini, Gary P Schroth 
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE: Christopher Mason, Moonsoo M. Jin
HOUSTON METHODIST RESEARCH INSTITUTE: Moonsoo M. Jin
* Joint first authors

Scientific Summary

Cell-mediated cytotoxicity assays are widely used to study immune-cell function, evaluate engineered cell therapies, and investigate mechanisms of tumor cell killing. While conventional co-culture assays measure the population response, they average away how individual cellular interactions produced it.

In this study, researchers used CellCage™ technology to isolate defined effector-target cell combinations and monitor thousands of individual interactions through longitudinal live-cell imaging. By combining dynamic measurements with quantitative analysis, the workflow enabled characterization of cellular behaviors including killing kinetics, serial killing, and cooperative interactions.

The study demonstrates how tracking the same effector-target interactions over time, rather than a single snapshot, links behavior directly to functional outcome, revealing heterogeneity that population-level measurements obscure. The approach in this study, applied across both hematologic and solid tumor models, provides a scalable framework for investigating immune-cell function and developing next-generation functional assays.

Key Highlights

See what the average hides
Perform longitudinal analysis of thousands of defined effector-target interactions rather than measuring only a population-average response.
Quantify functional heterogeneity
Capture differences in killing behavior, including killing kinetics, serial killing activity, motility, and interaction dynamics across individual cell pairs/combinations.
Measure cellular context
Examine how effector abundance and CD4+/CD8+ cellular composition influence cytotoxic outcomes within defined co-cultures.
Support multiple experimental workflows
Deploy both fluorescence-assisted and label-free approaches for studying immune-cell cytotoxicity across different biological models.
Capture interaction dynamics
Observe how individual effector and target cells interact over time, revealing behaviors that are difficult to resolve with endpoint or population-level measurements.

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Read the foundational publication describing the CellCage™ platform and the paired imaging-transcriptomic workflow.

Scientific Perspective

Explore why directly measuring cellular behavior can complement molecular profiling.

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