Investigating the Heterogeneity of the Crosstalk Between Cancer Cells and the Tumor-Microenvironment Using Calcium Profiling

Cancers are highly heterogeneous. This intra-tumoral heterogeneity contributes to the tumor development by confering new features such as drug resistance or aggressiveness. Understanding how this heterogeneity arises and how to detect it is a promising challenge to improve diagnosis and therapies. Aberrant regulation of calcium homeostasis in cancer cells has been extensively described. However, the relationship between calcium homeostasis and tumor heterogeneity remains to be explored.
In this project, we hypothesized that the profile of calcium homeostasis could be indicate of the phenotype of the cancer cell. We aim to develop a workflow allowing to classify cancer cells according their profile of calcium responses. We generated a database of single cell calcium responses elicited by various molecules in a panel of colorectal and prostate cancer cell lines. Using unsupervised classification algorithms, we successfully develop a model defined several profiles of calcium responses. Using this model, we were able to distinguish the origin of cancer cells.
These results suggest that calcium profiling could be an effective tool to discriminate different sub-populations of cancer cells. Further experiments will be required to develop and improve this model.