SPYRE™ Antibody Panels transform immuno-oncology research

Introduction

The accurate selection of cancer immunotherapies and the prediction of cancer prognosis are based on a deep understanding of the tumor microenvironment (TME). Multiplex immunofluorescence (mIF) has become an important tool in the immune profiling of the TME. Multiplex IF assays allow the study of multiple markers in the same tissue sample preserving the spatial information of tissue morphology. From basic to clinical research, mIF enables the discovery of complex cell interactions and the identification of predictive biomarkers to monitor the patient’s response to immunotherapy. Independent of the cancer type, a common approach in the characterization of the TME by mIF is to target a broad set of phenotypes aimed at identifying subclasses of immune and cancer cells and their functional statuses. Beyond the common immune markers, additional markers are commonly of interest to be investigated, such as tissue-specific markers, to characterize tumors that arise from different organs; previously unknown and new markers, to adapt to the evolving findings of the immunology research; validation markers from previous screens, to validate biomarkers identified from exploratory approaches. Despite a fast-growing need for multiplex methods, mIF faces several barriers slowing its adoption in the field. Building multiplex panels requires fine-tuning of many interconnected conditions and can take up to several months when performed by manual staining methods. In addition, long and manual multiplex staining gives less reliable results due to user errors and tissue degradation. Upstream steps of antibody conjugation have a low-efficiency rate. Cross-validation is needed to combine barcoded antibodies every time a new panel is generated, thereby reducing the comparability and hence reproducibility of results across experiments, a downside particularly critical when analyzing large patient cohorts with different assays. In addition, once a panel is fully optimized on one tissue type, using the same panel on another tissue requires additional optimization steps to achieve high-quality results. With SPYRE™ Antibody Panels Lunaphore has developed a simplified and flexible solution based on a modular approach to support the needs of every researcher and streamline the IO field with robustness and reproducibility.