Issue 6, 2022

Dynamic metabolic change of cancer cells induced by natural killer cells at the single-cell level studied by label-free mass cytometry

Abstract

Natural killer cells (NK cells) are important immune cells which have attracted increasing attention in cancer immunotherapy. Due to the heterogeneity of cells, individual cancer cells show different resistance to NK cytotoxicity, which has been revealed by flow cytometry. Here we used label-free mass cytometry (CyESI-MS) as a new tool to analyze the metabolites in Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HepG2) cells at the single-cell level after the interaction with different numbers of NK92 MI cells. A large amount of chemical information from individual HepG2 cells was obtained showing the process of cell apoptosis induced by NK cells. Nineteen metabolites which consecutively change during cell apoptosis were revealed by calculating their average relative intensity. Four metabolic pathways were impacted during cell apoptosis which hit 4 metabolites including glutathione (GSH), creatine, glutamic acid and taurine. We found that the HepG2 cells could be divided into two phenotypes after co-culturing with NK cells according to the bimodal distribution of concentration of these 4 metabolites. The correlation between metabolites and different apoptotic pathways in the early apoptosis cell group was established by the 4 metabolites at the single-cell level. This is a new idea of using single-cell specific metabolites to reveal the metabolic heterogeneity in cell apoptosis which would be a powerful means for evaluating the cytotoxicity of NK cells.

Graphical abstract: Dynamic metabolic change of cancer cells induced by natural killer cells at the single-cell level studied by label-free mass cytometry

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
16 Nov 2021
Accepted
31 Dec 2021
First published
03 Jan 2022
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2022,13, 1641-1647

Dynamic metabolic change of cancer cells induced by natural killer cells at the single-cell level studied by label-free mass cytometry

Z. Shen, H. Zhao, H. Yao, X. Pan, J. Yang, S. Zhang, G. Han and X. Zhang, Chem. Sci., 2022, 13, 1641 DOI: 10.1039/D1SC06366A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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