Imaging-omics: Molecular profiling and visualisation of cells and tissues in more colors than meets the eye

Biological tissues are inherently three dimensional and as a consequence, cell states are greatly influenced by their surroundings.

In a number of applications e.g., tissue biopsies, developing embryos, immune cell in lymph nodes, or the tumour micro environment, we need to consider the surrounding cells in a three-dimensional context to correctly infer causal relationships between cells, their state and molecular interactions. Unfortunately, there is a lack of technologies that can provide this information reliable, cheap and fast and in 3D.

In this project, we will develop novel automated optical and chemical methods for visualization and molecular 3D profiling of biological tissues both for life science research and diagnostics.

In order to achieve these goals, we will advance and combine three imaging based technologies: molecular profiling, adaptive optics and light field microscopy, Our unique platform is based on single-objective light-sheet microscopy with light-field detection.

Importantly, it’s extremely fast volumetric imaging and low photobleaching will accelerate the generation of multi-omics data up to 100 times, thus providing a route towards clinical diagnostics.

We aim for highly multiplexed simultaneous 3D detection of e.g. mRNA, proteins, and in situ sequenced barcodes in tissue, thereby also addressing the current lack of hardware to reliably and simultaneously combine different omics readouts from a tissue.