High-throughput Plasmonic Functional Assay Platform for Rapid Therapeutic Profiling of Cancer Cells

Functional assay platforms offer a powerful approach for assessing drug treatments by directly probing cellular responses. However, their clinical translation is limited due to long assay times, bulk measurements, and low throughput. In this study, we present a high-throughput plasmonic functional assay platform to determine the therapeutic profile of cancer cells at single-cell resolution by monitoring real-time mass and growth rate dynamics. The platform utilizes periodic plasmonic nanohole arrays and diffraction field imaging with a CMOS camera to simultaneously track hundreds of cells within a single field of view. Cellular mass accumulation or loss is quantified by intensity variations associated with plasmonic resonance shifts. These shifts enable rapid growth profiling without labels or long-term cell culture. MCF-7 breast cancer cells are used to demonstrate that the platform can identify drug-induced growth inhibition and therapeutic heterogeneity within only a few hours, well before conventional viability assays. Our system successfully distinguishes drug-sensitive and drug-resistant (DR) subpopulations and resolves synergistic and antagonistic effects emerging from different drug combinations and treatment strategies. As a result, this plasmonic functional assay platform provides a rapid and scalable tool for functional drug profiling and has strong potential for personalized cancer therapy applications with a scanning capacity of approximately 500 cells per hour.