3D imaging for driving cancer discovery
This Learning Wednesday paper note highlights “3D imaging for driving cancer discovery.” The study is relevant to how 3D imaging methods are transforming cancer discovery, focusing on how three-dimensional tissue context can alter what researchers see and measure.
Selected notes from the paper
“Our understanding of the cellular composition and architecture of cancer has primarily advanced using 2D models and thin slice samples.”
“However, tissues contain a variety of interconnected cells with different functional states and shapes, and this complex organization is impossible to capture in a single plane.”
“Volumetric imaging permits the visualization of intact biological samples, thereby revealing the spatio-phenotypic and dynamic traits of cancer.”
“Large-scale 3D imaging has been instrumental for unravelling the structural landmarks of cancer in intact tumours and even organisms.”
“Light sheet technology, which can capture large field of views using low numerical aperture (NA) objectives, yet in detriment to some resolution, has been demonstrated especially suited to study such macroscopic structures within tissue.”
“3D imaging of blood vasculature has also helped to assess the efficacy of therapy delivery.”
“3D imaging plays an essential role in studying late manifestation of cancer, by enabling quantification of metastasis in cleared secondary organs.”
“Confocal or two-photon microscopes offer more mainstream systems for large-scale 3D imaging with higher resolution, yet at the sacrifice of some working depth.”
“Clinical application of 3D archival tissue imaging was further demonstrated by DIPCO, an iDISCO-based protocol for FFPE tissue, shown to have better accuracy compared to 2D histological analysis for diagnosis and stratification of patient prognosis.”
“Vessel radius, impossible to reliably quantify in 2D, could stratify prognosis for ovarian cancer patients, and vascular or lymphatic invasive cancer was more efficiently detected in 3D.”
“Unlike 2D cultures, the complex organoid architecture, when combined with live 3D imaging, provides an excellent platform to study often subtle changes in morphometric interactions and signalling dynamics in response to carcinogenesis and drug treatment.”
“3D imaging has the potential to generate broad knowledge advance from major mechanisms of tumour progression to new strategies for cancer treatment and patient diagnosis.”
From an Alpenglow perspective, this paper is useful because it connects changes in 3D imaging methods to cancer discovery with a broader need in 3D spatial biology, measuring tissue architecture across depth while preserving context for quantitative analysis.
