Figure 1 .

Schematics and cell loading of vertical adhesion-suspension co-culture platforms. (a) Single cancer cells are seeded in non-adherent micro-wells randomly (following Poisson’s distribution), and CAFs are cultured on a transwell insert. The 0.4 μm pores on transwell insert allow secreted proteins to pass through for cellular interactions between CAFs and cancer cells. (b) Micro-wells in a 20 by 20 array right after cell loading. SUM149 cancer cells were labeled with green fluorescence for counting (scale bar: 1 mm). (c) Enlarged view of micro-wells in a 4 by 6 array right after cell loading. (8 out of 24 wells captured single cells) (scale bar: 250 μm) (d) Distribution of the number of captured cancer cells per micro-well when loading 1500 cells into a 10 000-well device. (Error bar represents standard error of the mean (SEM), n = 3 devices).