通过提供随时间推移的空间、分子和形态数据，活细胞成像可以更深入地了解决定癌症对治疗的反应的细胞和信号事件。了解这种动态响应具有潜力通过确定生物标记物或可操作目标来提高临床结果，从而提高治疗效果。在这里，我们回顾了最近应用活细胞成像揭示肿瘤异质性治疗反应和针对癌症药物作用方式的研究。鉴于T细胞疗法的不断增加，我们讨论了时序成像捕捉免疫疗法的相互作用和运动性的独特机会。尽管传统上受限于捕捉的分子特征数量，但多维成像和多组学数据整合的新发展提供了将单细胞动力学与分子表型联系起来的策略。我们回顾了这些最近技术进步对我们对肿瘤靶向细胞动力学的理解的影响，并讨论其对下一代精确医学的影响。© 2023. Springer Nature Limited.

By providing spatial, molecular and morphological data over time, live-cell imaging can provide a deeper understanding of the cellular and signalling events that determine cancer response to treatment. Understanding this dynamic response has the potential to enhance clinical outcome by identifying biomarkers or actionable targets to improve therapeutic efficacy. Here, we review recent applications of live-cell imaging for uncovering both tumour heterogeneity in treatment response and the mode of action of cancer-targeting drugs. Given the increasing uses of T cell therapies, we discuss the unique opportunity of time-lapse imaging for capturing the interactivity and motility of immunotherapies. Although traditionally limited in the number of molecular features captured, novel developments in multidimensional imaging and multi-omics data integration offer strategies to connect single-cell dynamics to molecular phenotypes. We review the effect of these recent technological advances on our understanding of the cellular dynamics of tumour targeting and discuss their implication for next-generation precision medicine.© 2023. Springer Nature Limited.