High-content screening (HCS) is a technology for high-throughput phenotypic analysis of cells which is integrated into all aspects of contemporary drug discovery and development and increasingly attracts attention in cell biology. HCS enables investigating a variety of cell phenotypes including those linked to the cell metabolism. However, despite the growing interest to understand metabolism – in particular as a major regulator of functions of cancer cells and immune cells – HCS can provide only very limited information about concentrations of metabolites within cells.

We will develop HCS+M, a method for single-cell metabolite imaging of 100 metabolites simultaneously in the HCS context. HCS+M, given its success and implementation, has a high potential to shed light on metabolism on the single-cell level, to enable discoveries in biomedicine particularly in immunology, cancer, and diabetes, and to greatly facilitate developing novel drugs and repurposing of already existing drugs.