25
MAY
25. May 2022
What is Tissue Microenvironment Analysis?
Tissues, representing an interactive community of various cell types, underpin much of biomedical and health research and can give an important insight into development, progress and therapy of diseases. Performing tissue microenvironment analysis, to dissect cellular components and their interactions, requires examining tissues on a minuscule scale to extract cellular states and functioning data that can be translatable to human health applications and that requires powerful tools such as tissue cytometry to accomplish. Advanced image analysis instrumentation enables these laboratory procedures to be more streamlined and possess increased usability. This blog will specifically focus on discussing the advantages and applications of tissue microenvironment analysis in more detail with respect to a particular case study, providing resources to solutions to ensure high quality analytical performance in the laboratory.
Advantages of Tissue Cytometry in Microenvironment Analysis
Studying cells in their native tissue environment offers many advantages, including insight into spatial relationships that are otherwise difficult to examine. Also, tissue cytometry can overcome the limitations of other tissue analysis methods, like flow cytometry, which lack valuable spatial information on the tissue microenvironment. Furthermore, tissue cytometry can build on the capabilities of imaging programs and standard microscopy systems that are limited to a finite amount of biomarkers. In providing a more cohesive illustration of cells, tissue cytometry allows an in-depth tissue microenvironment including information about cell-to-cell contacts, spatial relationships, cell functioning and cell dynamics. The next section of this blog will briefly discuss an example of how scientists used this strategy’s advantages to conduct research and mention applications of this analysis technique.
Applications of Tissue Microenvironment Analysis
Using the TissueFAXS automated imaging system and Strataquest contextual image analysis software by Tissuegnostics, researchers at Yale University performed tissue microenvironment analysis to produce and analyse high resolution images of tissues by automated whole slide scanning. The team was able to utilize a cyclical staining and imaging protocol to continuously image unusually high numbers of biomarkers in this particular melanoma study. In this case study, the tissue microenvironment analysis helped preserve the target cells’ spatial characteristics and produced data output in multiple usable forms, including histograms and scatterplots. For more details about this specific research, please see the white paper Characterizing the Complex Microenvironment of Individual Immune Cell.
In summary, tissue microenvironment analysis allows for disease research as well as drug and therapeutics development to provide insight into the underlying mechanisms of cell behavior.
Tissue Microenvironment Analysis With TissueGnostics
A leader in tissue analysis solutions, TissueGnostics provides high-performing products such as TissueFAXS to meet tissue microenvironment scanning and analysis needs. TissueGnostics offers many advantages with a line of products featuring advanced analysis abilities. Experts at TissueGnostics provide clients with solutions designed with accurate, cohesive and detailed data of the tissue microenvironment analysis in mind. For example, the TissueFAXS imaging system can perform widefield fluorescence slide scanning, live imaging, and automated and whole slide confocal fluorescence imaging. StrataQuest by Tissuegnostics can detect tissue structures, cellular organelles and compartments, and quantify spatial relationships between cells. Further details about our various products and services can be found on our website. If you are interested in learning more about tissue microenvironment analysis or other tissue cytometry applications and our related services, please reach out to a member of the TissueGnostics team.
References
• https://tissuegnostics.com/products
• https://tissuegnostics.com/contact
• https://tissuegnostics.com/white-papers-phenotyping
• https://tissuegnostics.com/products/fluorescence-brightfield-cytometer/tissuefaxs-plus
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