Multiplex immunofluorescence microscopy is a cutting-edge technique that harnesses the power of multiple wavelengths of light and fluorescent markers to create intricate multi-spectral images, unlocking a wealth of possibilities for addressing diverse research inquiries. Visikol, from its inception, has been at the forefront of cell visualization, pioneering accessible tissue clearing reagents for multiplex immunofluorescent 3D microscopy.

Fluorescent Microscopy

In the realm of fluorescent microscopy, a dye-tagged antibody binds to the target antigen, enabling the visualization and quantitative assessment of specific points of interest. This target is rendered as a fluorescent pattern, emitting distinctive colors when exposed to a particular energy wavelength, releasing photons that can be captured and analyzed by the microscopy system.

Antibodies

The strength of this technique lies in its ability to yield highly contrasted, specific, and quantitative results. The quality of the data hinges on the antibodies’ specificity for their target antigens, as well as the brightness and contrast of the fluorescent labels. Historically, most labs have relied on single or double target detection due to its simplicity in planning and instrument requirements. However, this approach is limiting, particularly for complex research questions in areas like immune-oncology, where understanding the interactions between multiple cell types, such as T-cells, B-cells, and Natural Killer cells, is crucial.

Visualize up to 5 or More Targets

Multiplex immunofluorescence microscopy breaks free from these limitations, enabling the simultaneous visualization of up to five or more targets within cells or tissues. Given the intricate optimization involved, Visikol offers clients both pre-validated multiplex immunofluorescence panels and the flexibility to design and validate custom panels. Moreover, Visikol complements this with high-content imaging, image analysis, and comprehensive reporting. This integrated workflow empowers clients to swiftly transform their tissues into meaningful insights without the burden of developing resource-intensive in-house tissue processing, labeling, imaging, analysis, and reporting pipelines.

A Powerful Tool

In the realm of immuno-oncology, where targeted therapies are paramount, multiplex immunofluorescence emerges as a potent tool for identifying relevant biomarkers and characterizing alterations in their spatial distribution and activation states. Committed to advancing oncology drug discovery, Visikol offers pre-validated immune-oncology panels and stands ready to leverage these resources to address your specific research inquiries. If you’re interested in learning more reach out to a member of our team!

Multiplexed imaging is a powerful tool that allows researchers to visualize changes in several compartments of the cell with organelle-specific stains. This technique enables researchers to examine changes in cellular pathways with subcellular resolution. In this blog post, we’ll explore how Visikol’s Cell Painting Assay can provide a comprehensive view of cellular pathways, allowing researchers to gain a deeper understanding of how drugs impact cellular processes. From understanding physiological, metabolic, or epigenetic perturbations to analyzing hundreds to thousands of parameters, we’ll explain how Visikol’s Cell Painting Assay can help researchers make informed decisions about which compounds to pursue.

Drug discovery and development is a complex process that involves identifying and testing compounds that can be used to treat diseases. The process can be time-consuming and expensive, and many compounds fail to make it to market. One of the challenges of drug discovery is understanding how drugs interact with cellular pathways. Cellular pathways are complex networks of biochemical reactions that are involved in many physiological processes, including cell growth, differentiation, and death. Understanding how drugs impact cellular pathways is critical to developing effective therapies.

Multiplexed imaging is a technique that allows researchers to visualize multiple markers or stains on a single slide with subcellular resolution. This technique enables researchers to examine changes in several compartments of the cell with organelle-specific stains. The Cell Painting Assay is a high-content, multiplexed image-based assay that utilizes organelle-specific stains to visualize physiological, metabolic, or epigenetic perturbations in different cellular compartments. The assay provides a comprehensive view of cellular pathways by analyzing hundreds to thousands of parameters.

More on Visikol’s Cell Painting Assay

Through the Cell Painting Assay, researchers can gain a deeper understanding of how drugs impact cellular processes by providing a detailed report that allows clients to explore their specific research questions. The assay can be used to understand physiological, metabolic, or epigenetic perturbations by visualizing changes in different cellular compartments. For example, Visikol scientists used the Cell Painting Assay to elucidate the effects of a small molecule anti-proliferative therapeutic and cytochalasin B in cancer cells. The resulting images showed the effects of the drugs on the ER network, cytoskeleton, and mitochondria. This information can be used to develop a better understanding of how the drugs are working and to optimize their use in drug discovery. The Cell Painting Assay is a powerful tool for drug discovery and development. The assay can be used to identify compounds that affect specific cellular pathways, allowing researchers to make informed decisions about which compounds to pursue. The assay can also be used to optimize the use of existing compounds by providing a better understanding of how they work. By using Visikol’s Cell Painting Assay, researchers can “fail faster” by being able to visualize tangible changes at the cellular level.

Visikol’s Cell Painting Assay is a powerful tool for drug discovery and development. The assay provides a comprehensive view of cellular pathways by analyzing hundreds to thousands of parameters. By using the assay, researchers can gain a deeper understanding of how drugs impact cellular processes, allowing them to make informed decisions about which compounds to pursue. Visikol’s Cell Painting Assay is a valuable tool for pharmaceutical companies, pharmaceutical scientists, biochemists, medicinal chemists, pharmacologists, and toxicologists who are involved in drug discovery and development.

To learn more about the Cell Painting Assay, please reach out to a member of our team.

Here at Visikol, we recently announced the launch of our multiplex imaging services in a GLP setting (read more here: Visikol GLP Multiplex Tissue Imaging Services), and you may be wondering what this means. In biotechnology, GLP stands for Good Laboratory Practice. GLP is a quality assurance system that ensures the consistent and reliable generation of data in non-clinical safety studies of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other products. It provides guidelines and regulations for conducting laboratory experiments and studies in a manner that ensures the integrity, reliability, and traceability of the generated data.

More on GLP Regulations

The GLP regulations encompass a wide range of aspects related to laboratory operations, such as the qualifications and training of personnel, the maintenance and calibration of equipment, the documentation and reporting of experiments, the handling and storage of test substances, and the overall conduct of the study. Compliance with GLP standards is important for regulatory submissions and the acceptance of data by regulatory authorities.

The GLP guidelines were developed to ensure that non-clinical safety studies, which are performed to assess the potential hazards and risks of substances, are conducted in a consistent and rigorous manner. This helps to protect human health and the environment by ensuring that the data generated from these studies are accurate, reliable, and can be independently verified.

Visikol consistently strives to broaden its applications for our clients, and with the addition of GLP imaging services, we aim to diversify the scope of our work within the industry. If you are interested to learn more about our multiplex tissue imaging, reach out to our team to discuss your next project.

Over the last seven years, Visikol has continually been on the forefront of advanced tissue imaging technologies with its introduction of the Visikol HISTO 3D tissue imaging approach and more recently with its fluorescent multiplex tissue imaging services and its Imaging Mass Cytometry services. We are excited to announce that we are now offering our multiplex tissue imaging services in a GLP setting such that they can be applied to a much wider set of applications for our clients.

What is Multiplex Tissue Imaging?

Multiplex tissue imaging refers to the concept of applying multiplex markers (typically >3) to a single tissue so that many biomarkers can be visualized together. Traditionally, chromogenic IHC is limited to 2-3 markers as overlapping colors prevent effective deconvolution. For many applications, only 2-3 markers is acceptable for addressing a research question but it is highly limited for addressing complex research questions. For example, in the context of immunology and immuno-oncology it is critically important to understand the complex interplay between different types of immune cells and the underlying pathology. This complexity necessitates multiple tissue labels where many markers can be visualized simultaneously.

Other Resources

If you are interested in learning more about multiplex tissue imaging check out the resources below or reach out to our team to discuss your next project:

• Multiplex Tissue Imaging eBook
• When to Use IMC Over Multiplex Fluorescence
• Clinical Implications of Multiplex Imaging

With the many image analysis services that Visikol has to offer, cell counting is by far one of the most popular services we provide. Cell counting is a service that provides insights into the cell populations present within a multiplex imaged sample by analyzing the positivity of client selected markers and marker combinations in cells within client images. The analysis is conducted through the segmentation of cells using a nuclear marker and colocalization of the other segmented markers to the segmented cells to determine positivity for the markers within each cell as seen in Figure 1. The analysis can also be extended to determining the positivity of markers within specific compartments of the cell such as the cytoplasm or the membrane with the addition of markers to outline those compartments.

This type of analysis is useful because it can help to elucidate answers into how a treatment is affecting cell populations within a treated tissue sample. Specifically, cell counting can be useful because it can provide quantitative answers about the treatment’s effect. Some use cases involve the analysis of immune cell populations, cells expressing certain genes/proteins, or cells undergoing certain biological processes. Additionally, with multiple treatment groups, the images can be compared so that statistical metrics can be calculated to quantify the difference between the groups. This type of data is useful because it can provide insights into the biological change seen between control and treated groups to help a researcher gain a better understanding of how their treatment affects the cells within a tissue with quantitative metrics.

In order to augment the analysis, Visikol offers a spatial analysis service where distance metrics can be calculated between cells or cells to specific regions. This utilizes the information gained from cell counting to inform researchers about interactions of identified cells to other cells and specific regions within the tissue. Spatial analysis can help to answer questions such as cell infiltration into regions of a tissue (ex. immune cell infiltration into a tumor) and relations between different cell subtypes (ex. immune cell interactions). Furthermore, Visikol offers a wide variety of analyses that can take the analysis to the next level such as morphological analyses and bioinformatics to take a deeper dive into the data and extract more metrics to compare. Please contact us if you are interested in any of these services and wish to find out more information about them.

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., October 11, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Standard BioTools Inc. (Nasdaq:LAB), driven by a bold purpose – Unleashing tools to accelerate breakthroughs in human health™ – today announced a collaboration agreement with Visikol® for service offerings using Imaging Mass Cytometry™.

The agreement is an expansion of the relationship established in 2020 under which Visikol will offer IMC services to clients from its site in Hampton, NJ. Visikol, a contract research services company focused on advanced tissue imaging and advanced cell culture assays, services all 20 of the top pharmaceutical companies. Visikol will leverage the Standard BioTools™ Hyperion+™ Imaging System, based on Imaging Mass Cytometry (IMC™), in its multiplex tissue imaging services. This initiative is supported by Visikol’s digital pathology services, which aim to transform large imaging-based datasets into actionable insights.

Recently, the demand for tools to evaluate the complex immune cell landscape has grown dramatically as researchers, biotech companies, and pharmaceutical companies look to develop immuno-oncology therapeutics and better understand the intricate interplay between the immune system and disease.

Multiplex tissue imaging is a key tool that researchers can use to characterize a wide range of immune cell and tissue-specific biomarkers simultaneously. Standard BioTools has developed a version of this technology, IMC that currently allows for 40-plus markers to be detected on a single slide with an unprecedented level of sensitivity, quantification, and absence of autofluorescence. In addition, IMC’s rapid panel design capability is particularly well suited to applications within contract research organizations.

“As a company that is focused on advanced tissue imaging, we are excited to add IMC to our portfolio of tools and to work closely with Standard BioTools, as it will allow us to better meet the needs of our clients,” said Visikol CEO Michael Johnson, PhD. “IMC provides our clients with the unique ability to image many markers simultaneously while providing an unparalleled level of image quality.”

“IMC is one of the essential technologies that Standard BioTools provides,” said Michael Egholm, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Standard BioTools. “The valuable relationship with Visikol broadens the use of IMC for spatial omics studies, offering a vital tool in the acceleration of drug discovery and development in particular when dealing with precious and scarce patient biopsies.  We look forward to working with the Visikol team to help their pharma clients uncover important spatial relationships within the tissue microenvironment.”

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, among others, statements regarding the potential benefits of research conducted using Standard BioTools products and technologies and anticipated benefits to Standard BioTools of an expanded collaboration. Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from currently anticipated results, including but not limited to risks relating to interruptions or delays in the supply of components or materials for, or manufacturing of, Standard BioTools products; potential product performance and quality issues; intellectual property risks; competition; uncertainties in contractual relationships; and reductions in research and development spending or changes in budget priorities by customers. Information on these and additional risks and uncertainties and other information affecting Standard BioTools’ business and operating results is contained in its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021, and in its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. Standard BioTools disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements except as may be required by law.

About Standard BioTools Inc.
Standard BioTools Inc. (Nasdaq:LAB), previously known as Fluidigm, is driven by a bold purpose –Unleashing tools to accelerate breakthroughs in human health. Standard BioTools has an established portfolio of essential, standardized next-generation technologies that help biomedical researchers develop medicines faster and better. As a leading solutions provider, the company provides reliable and repeatable insights in health and disease using its proprietary mass cytometry and microfluidics technologies, which help transform scientific discoveries into better patient outcomes. Standard BioTools works with leading academic, government, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, plant and animal research, and clinical laboratories worldwide, focusing on the most pressing needs in translational and clinical research, including oncology, immunology, and immunotherapy.  Learn more at www.standardbio.com or connect with us on Twitter®, Facebook®, LinkedIn, and YouTube™. Standard BioTools, the Standard BioTools logo, Fluidigm, the Fluidigm logo, “Unleashing tools to accelerate breakthroughs in human health,” CyTOF, Hyperion, Hyperion+, Imaging Mass Cytometry and IMC are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Standard BioTools Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the sole property of their respective owners. Standard BioTools products are provided for Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.

About Visikol
Visikol is a contract research services company that is focused on accelerating the drug discovery and development process through providing its clients with advanced tissue imaging and advanced cell culture services. Today, Visikol counts the top 20 pharmaceutical companies as clients and has been instrumental in dozens of drug discovery programs. The company provides end-to-end services that include 3D tissue imaging, multiplex tissue imaging, digital pathology, high-content imaging, 2D cell culture assays, 3D cell culture assays, and ex vivo tissue slice assays. Visikol’s expertise lies in both transforming tissues into actionable insights and bridging the gap between in vitro assays and in vivo results through the use of best in-class cell culture models. In addition to its services, Visikol sells a suite of tissue clearing reagents and kits as well as the HUREL® Micro Liver portfolio of primary hepatocyte liver models. Learn more at www.visikol.com.

Available Information
Standard BioTools uses its website (standardbio.com), investor site (investors.standardbio.com), corporate Twitter account (@Standard_BioT), Facebook page (facebook.com/StandardBioT), and LinkedIn page (linkedin.com/company/standard-biotools) as channels of distribution of information about its products, its planned financial and other announcements, its attendance at upcoming investor and industry conferences, and other matters. Such information may be deemed material information, and Standard BioTools may use these channels to comply with its disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. Therefore, investors should monitor Standard BioTools’ website and its social media accounts in addition to following its press releases, SEC filings, public conference calls, and webcasts.

Investors:
Peter DeNardo
415 389 6400
ir@standardbio.com

Source: Standard BioTools Inc.

Download our Multiplex Tissue Imaging eBook Today!

With the recent advances in the field of tumor immunology and cancer immunotherapy, there is a growing need for multiplex imaging methods that can simultaneously label multiple tumor and immune cell biomarkers providing users valuable information about the complex tumor microenvironment.

This eBook will examine the pros and cons of using:

• Tissue-Based Cyclic Immunofluorescence (t-CyCIF) Method
• Co-Detection by Indexing or Fluorescent Immunohisto-PCR
• Fluorescent Tyramide mediated amplification
• Visikol Multiplex Immunofluorescence (VMIF)
• Imaging Mass Cytometry

…and more!