Background: Cell-to-cell interactions are complex processes that involve physical\ninteractions, chemical binding, and biological signaling pathways. Identification of\nthe functions of special signaling pathway in cell-to-cell interaction from the very first\ncontact will help characterize the mechanism underlying the interaction and advance\nnew drug discovery.\nMethods: This paper reported a case study of characterizing initial interaction\nbetween leukemia cancer cells and bone marrow stromal cells, through the use of an\noptical tweezers-based cell manipulation tool. Optical traps were used to assemble\nleukemia cells at different positions of the stromal cell layer and enable their interactions\nby applying a small trapping force to maintain the cell contact for a few minutes.\nSpecific drug was used to inhibit the binding of molecules during receptor-ligand mediated\nadhesion.\nResults and conclusions: Our results showed that the amount of adhesion molecule\ncould affect cell adhesion during the first few minutes contact. We also found that\nleukemia cancer cells could migrate on the stromal cell layer, which was dependent\non the adhesion state and activation triggered by specific chemokine. The reported\napproaches provided a new opportunity to investigate cell-to-cell interaction through\nsingle cell adhesion manipulation.
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