Spatially and temporally controlled immune cell interactions using microscale tools

•Characterizing immune cells requires control over their interactions in space and time.•Microscale tools generate cell–cell interactions with precise spatiotemporal control.•Microscale tools enable single-cell multiplexed profiling of cell–cell interactions.•We review various microscale tools with their strengths, limitations and applications.•We highlight the key challenges and opportunities to expand the microscale toolkit.

Many critical immunological responses are mediated by cell–cell interactions. Despite their capabilities, traditional techniques that rely on snapshot analysis or ensemble measurements can only provide a fragmentary picture of the complexity of these interactions. Emerging classes of new and versatile microscale tools hold great potential for enabling detailed investigation of these interactions with precise control in space and time, multiplexed measurement capability and high-throughput single-cell analysis. These features allow new ways of examining immune cell interactions that are not possible with traditional methods, improve the extent of information extracted from experiments, and reveal new findings. Here, we review recent developments in microscale tools that are paving the way for comprehensive analyses of cell–cell interactions in the immune system.

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