Impact of a chemical stimulus on two different cell lines through microwave dielectric spectroscopy at the single cell level

Cellular analysis with microwave dielectric spectroscopy is gaining interest, as it presents attractive characteristics, such as being non-invasive, non-destructive, label-free, while cells may be analyzed directly into their culture medium. Most importantly, the microwave range enables intracellular investigations. This paper confirms such a capability through the evaluation of the different chemo-induced cell responses of two cell lines, HCT 166 and THP1. Moreover, this analyzing method does not only present different capacitive contrasts depending on cell lines. It also allows to extract distinct dielectric variations due to a chemical agent, which are attributed to different cell line-dependent internal modifications of the cells.