Spatial profiling technologies and applications for brain cancers

GEN: If I were to design my own panel for immunofluorescence, what are the main considerations, given everything you’ve suggested during the webinar for validation? Angela: There are several things one needs to think about when you build a new panel for multiplexed immunofluorescence. You need to consider the abundance of the targets to be

Despite advances in immunotherapy, it’s clear that only a minority of patients respond. Therapies that rely on immune activation, such as checkpoint inhibitors, have been shown to be especially difficult due to the complex and heterogeneous immune escape mechanisms which can develop in each patient. Clearly there’s much anticipation and focus on new contenders for successful combination checkpoint therapy.

It’s clearly a very timely discussion with many recent articles reviewing the complexities of the tumor microenvironment and overall tumor heterogeneity that have been implicated in late-stage clinical failures, underscoring an urgent need for tests that accurately predict response to the growing number of available therapies.

Alfred Hitchcock once said, “The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture”, for the immunotherapy picture, that successful villain is M1 macrophages.

It was a record year of attendance at this year’s 37th annual SITC meeting. Whether reflective of waning new Covid cases from a peak in late January 2022, a new location, or merely the appetite to meet up with colleagues, check out new technologies or be part of important scientific discussions-Boston SITC had it all.

I’ve always been curious, with a need to be on the cutting edge of scientific innovation, so after a successful academic career I moved to the rapidly evolving world of biotech. A 15-year journey in this space ultimately led me to Ultivue, their novel InSituPlex® assay, and following advances in tissue multiplexing.

If you stand too close to the painting for too long observing all the details, you begin to lose sight of what those brush strokes have created. Only when you step back to take in the scene can you have a full understanding and appreciation for how the individual elements come together to create a work of art.

GEN: Typically, image analysis tools are greatly influenced by inconsistent staining results and even different techniques used for multiplexing. How does the software used by OracleBio account for inter- and intra-run variability in staining quality? Lorcan. To be honest, we do see staining variability in some sample sets, especially in complex tissues from large clinical