From a tissue to another one: easy adaptation of a core immuno-oncology panel

The development of novel immune-therapies and diagnostic tests requires a detailed understanding of the immune system and tumoral cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Multiplexed immunofluorescence (IF) is one of the emerging technologies to study the spatial distribution of TME biomarkers in their topographic context and in a quantitative manner.
Developing a multiplex IF panel of TME biomarkers usually requires weeks of work with traditional procedures. In addition, when studying several tissue types, a multiplex IF panel cannot be easily adapted to other tumors for reasons such as heterogeneity between tumor types, variability among tumor sections, different patterns of biomarker expression, diverse tissue architectures, as well as variation of tissue autofluorescence.

Thus, when transferring a multiplex staining protocol to a new tissue type, the optimization of many conditions needs to be taken into consideration. Important optimization parameters to consider include antibody concentration, incubation time, and antibody elution. With conventional manual methods, optimization can take several weeks of work and requires the use of large amounts of expensive reagents and precious sample.