The Fine Balance of Immunology

The immune system often plays a role in the onset and progression of different disorders such as autoimmunity, fibrosis, and cancer. Understanding which cell types, cytokines, pathways, and transcription factors are involved in the balance between immune activation and suppression can lead to better treatments for chronic inflammation and disease. In addition to traditional bulk expression and proteomic analysis, spatial profiling of the location of immune cells in tissue can yield a better understanding of disease pathogenesis, uncovering differences within individuals as well as novel biomarkers for stratification and treatment.

Challenges

We know it’s a challenge as an immunologist to piece together what underlies healthy versus exhausted or abnormal immune system function. Projects often involve many different research techniques, cell types, and biomolecules and you may be working with a variety of sample types. Even more of a challenge is understanding how different immune cells and biomolecules function and communicate in situ in the tissue in response to disease.

How much could you advance your understanding of the immune system if you had access to a multiplexed technology platform for transcriptomic and proteomic analysis of multiple sample types such as Formalin-Fixed, Paraffin-Embedded (FFPE) tissue sections, fresh frozen tissue, cell lysates, PBMCs and whole blood? Make an impact on human health faster with streamlined bulk and spatial analysis of RNA, protein, and immune cell types using the combined power of the nCounter® Analysis System and the GeoMx® Digital Spatial Profiler.

Featured Solutions

Choose from curated, multiplexed nCounter Gene Expression Panels, nCounter Vantage 3D™ Protein Assays, GeoMx DSP RNA Assays, and/or GeoMx Protein Assays to build your next experiment and discover answers to your immunology questions. Take advantage of embedded immune cell typing signatures in nCounter expression panels to quantify the relative abundance of 14 different immune cell types or run an nCounter panel downstream of FACs to profile specific immune cell populations.

nCounter Autoimmune Profiling Panel

Analyze 35 pathways across 770 human or mouse genes focused on the biology driving autoimmune disorders

nCounter Human Organ Transplant Panel

Develop gene signatures for organ rejection with a curated panel developed in collaboration with the Banff Foundation for Allograft Pathology

nCounter Fibrosis Panel

Profile 770 genes across 51 annotated pathways to study the four stages of fibrotic disease in the liver, lung, kidney, heart, and skin Vantage 3D™ RNA Expression

Vantage 3D™ Immune Cell Profiling Panel

Track protein expression of key cell surface receptors, lineage markers, and regulatory molecules to monitor shifts in cell type abundance and activation status

GeoMx DSP Immuno-Oncology RNA and Protein Assays

Profile up to 96 RNA or Protein targets from a single FFPE tissue section or fresh frozen tissue slice and customize your assay with spike-in probes

Publications

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Best Practices for Spatial Profiling for Breast Cancer Research with the GeoMx® Digital Spatial Profiler

Breast cancer is a heterogenous disease with variability in tumor cells and in the surrounding tumor microenvironment (TME). Understanding the molecular diversity in breast cancer is critical for improving prediction of therapeutic response and prognostication.

Spatially organized multicellular immune hubs in human colorectal cancer.

Immune responses to cancer are highly variable, with mismatch repair-deficient (MMRd) tumors exhibiting more anti-tumor immunity than mismatch repair-proficient (MMRp) tumors. To understand the rules governing these varied responses, we transcriptionally profiled 371,223 cells from colorectal tumors and adjacent normal tissues of 28 MMRp and 34 MMRd individuals.

Increased tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte density is associated with favorable outcomes in a comparative study of canine histiocytic sarcoma.

Histiocytic sarcoma (HS) is a rare and aggressive tumor in humans with no universally agreed standard of care therapy. Spontaneous canine HS exhibits increased prevalence in specific breeds, shares key genetic and biologic similarities with the human disease, and occurs in an immunocompetent setting.