Energetic metabolism reprogramming is critical for cancer and immune responses. Current methods to functionally profile the global metabolic capacities and dependencies of cells are performed in bulk. We designed a simple method for complex metabolic profiling called SCENITH, for single-cell energetic metabolism by profiling translation inhibition. SCENITH allows for the study of metabolic responses in multiple cell types in parallel by flow cytometry. SCENITH is designed to perform metabolic studies ex vivo, particularly for rare cells in whole blood samples, avoiding metabolic biases introduced by culture media. We analyzed myeloid cells in solid tumors from patients and identified variable metabolic profiles, in ways that are not linked to their lineage or their activation phenotype. SCENITH’s ability to reveal global metabolic functions and determine complex and linked immune-phenotypes in rare cell subpopulations will contribute to the information needed for evaluating therapeutic responses or patient stratification.

能量代谢重编程对于癌症和免疫反应至关重要。目前对细胞的整体代谢能力和依赖性进行功能分析的方法是批量进行的。我们设计了一种简单的复杂代谢分析方法，称为 SCENITH，通过分析翻译抑制来进行单细胞能量代谢。SCENITH 允许通过流式细胞术并行研究多种细胞类型的代谢反应。SCENITH 旨在进行离体代谢研究，特别是全血样本中的稀有细胞，避免培养基引入的代谢偏差。我们分析了患者实体瘤中的骨髓细胞，并以与其谱系或激活表型无关的方式确定了可变的代谢特征。SCENITH 能够揭示全局代谢功能并确定稀有细胞亚群中复杂且相关的免疫表型，这将有助于提供评估治疗反应或患者分层所需的信息。