What do you get when you combine star-gazing technology with tumor imaging?
According to a study recently published in Science, you get a significant step forward in the efforts of oncologists to treat cancer patients.
The “star-gazing” tech involves “the image analysis techniques that created the database for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a large digital map of the universe architected by astrophysicist Alexander Szalay, the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Computer Science.” When combined with advanced immunofluorescence imaging of cancer biopsies, the result is a significantly greater capacity to analyze images of tumors and, by extension, to predict which cancers will respond to specific therapies targeting the immune system.
"This platform has the potential to transform how oncologists will deliver cancer immunotherapy. For the last 40 years, pathology analysis of cancer has examined one marker at a time, which provides limited information. Leveraging new technology, including instrumentation to image up to 12 markers simultaneously, the AstroPath imaging algorithms provide 1,000 times the information content from a single biopsy than is currently available through routine pathology," said Drew Pardoll, MD, PhD, director of the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, in announcing the study results.
"This facilitates precision cancer immunotherapy-- identifying the unique features of each patient's cancer to predict who will respond to a given immunotherapy, such as [anti-programmed cell death-1], and who will not. In doing so, it also advances diagnostic pathology from uniparameter to multiparameter assays.”
As the study explained, “(t)he next generation of pathologic analyses will require platforms that can characterize the coexpression of key molecules on specific cellular subsets in situ and spatial relationships between tumor cells and multiple immune elements. To that aim, we applied astronomical algorithms for high-quality imaging and the establishment of relational databases to multiplex immunofluorescence (mIF) labeling of pathology specimens, facilitating spatial analyses and immunoarchitectural characterization of the host-tumor interface.”
"The spatial arrangements of different kinds of cells within tumors are important," said Janis Taube, MD, MSc, a leader of the research team, professor of dermatology and co-director of the tumor Microenvironment Laboratory at the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute in the press release.
"Cells are giving each other go/no-go signals based on direct contacts as well as locally secreted factors. Quantifying the proximities between cells expressing specific proteins has the potential to reveal whether these geographic interactions are likely transpiring and what interactions may be responsible for inhibiting immune cells from killing the tumor.”
Researchers said next steps include multi-institutional studies showing that these tests can be standardized, followed by a prospective clinical trial.
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