Heterogeneity in cell function has presented a significant hurdle to the successful clinical translation of many cellular therapies. Current techniques for assessing cell quality and the effects of microenvironmental cues and manufacturing processes on cell behavior often inadequately address heterogeneity due to issues such as population versus single-cell measurements and the therapeutic relevance and throughput/robustness of the assay. Due to the well-established relationship between morphology and cellular function, morphological profiling has become increasingly utilized to better understand functional heterogeneity and its impact on therapeutic development. In this review, we introduce an emerging field we term functionally-relevant morphological profiling with great potential to improve our understanding of cellular heterogeneity through discovering novel quality attributes, optimizing manufacturing, and screening drugs/biomaterials.

细胞功能的异质性为许多细胞疗法的成功临床翻译提出了重要的障碍。由于诸如群体与单细胞测量以及测定的治疗相关性和通量/稳健性等问题，用于评估细胞质量以及微环境提示和制造过程对细胞行为的影响的当前技术通常无法充分解决异质性问题。由于形态学与细胞功能之间的公认关系，形态学特征分析已被越来越多地用于更好地理解功能异质性及其对治疗发展的影响。在这篇评论中，