Speaker Dr Stephan Daetwyler,Postdoctoral Researcher Fiolka Lab, UT Southwestern Medical Centre, Deptartment of Cell Biology, Dallas, Texas

Title Imaging of cancer cell dynamics in situ: from a whole organism to subcellular imaging with self-driving, multi-scale microscopy

Host Anna Bajur

 

Abstract Many biological processes span multiple time and length scales, including cancer cell metastasis and cancer cell-immune cell interactions. However, it has remained a fundamental challenge to observe where such events occur on a whole organism-level and simultaneously provide mechanistic insight at a subcellular resolution. To image across these spatial scales for long time periods, we present a multi-resolution, self-driving light-sheet microscope platform that enables observation and quantification of cellular and subcellular behaviors in the context of processes associated with tumor growth, invasion, and dissemination in vitro and in situ.

We demonstrate the power of our imaging platform with studies of tumor-immune cell interactions in an embryonic zebrafish xenograft model. Thereby, our microscope switches within seconds from subcellular imaging to whole organism imaging at micron-level resolution. Importantly, the microscope is self-driving, i.e. it automatically focuses image acquisition onto the cells and regions of biological interests. This enables long term observations with sub-cellular resolution over hours in situ.

Together, our platform paves the way to shed new light on tumor-immune cell interactions in situ at a molecular level within a tumor microenvironment. Beyond these interactions, the applicability of these new tools to identify and study processes in development and disease is imminent.