NanoString’s GeoMx Digital Spatial Profiling Platform Reveals Insights Into the Immune Landscape of Cancer in Publication in the Journal Cell

NanoString Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: NSTG), a leading provider of life science tools for discovery and translational research, today announced a peer-reviewed publication using the GeoMx^® Digital Spatial Profiler (DSP), published in the journal Cell.

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Image: Current cover of the journal Cell (Graphic: Business Wire)

The study, “Spatially organized multicellular immune hubs in human colorectal cancer,” was led by Drs. Karin Pelka, Matan Hofree, and Jonathan Chen at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. They used single cell transcriptomics, in situ hybridization, and GeoMx DSP to assess the mechanisms governing interactions between colorectal tumor cells and tumor-infiltrating immune cells.

The study investigated a cohort of 28 mismatch repair-proficient tumors and 34 mismatch repair-deficient colorectal cancer samples. In a subset of these tumors with a high number of potentially tumor-reactive T cells, the authors quantified cellular programs defined by single cell RNA-seq and mapped their interactions using the GeoMx Cancer Transcriptome Atlas (CTA) assay across 135 regions of interest, thus revealing the spatial transcriptional regulation that organizes immune-malignant cell networks. The auto segmentation capabilities of the DSP, which allows for tissue compartment-based profiling based on cellular phenotype, were essential to localizing transcriptional signatures to specific cell populations.

“To validate the interaction between malignant and T cell programs, we performed spatially-indexed transcript profiling on our patient tumor sections. We observed a positive correlation between interferon stimulated gene expression in malignant epithelial areas and CXCL13 expression in adjacent non-epithelial areas across all regions. From our single cell RNA-seq data we knew that CXCL13 was specifically expressed by chronically stimulated, potentially tumor-reactive T cells,” said Pelka. “These findings further support potential interactions between malignant cells and T cells in this hub via a chemokine mediated network,” added co-author Jonathan Chen, Massachusetts General Hospital.

“This study demonstrates the power of combining conventional single cell gene expression and GeoMx Digital Spatial Profiling enabled by Next Generation Sequencing readout,” said Brad Gray, NanoString’s president and chief executive officer.

The GeoMx DSP enables researchers to rapidly and quantitatively characterize tissue morphology with a high-throughput, high-plex RNA and protein profiling system that preserves precious samples for future analyses. NanoString and its collaborators have presented DSP data in dozens of abstracts at major scientific meetings and in more than 60 peer-reviewed publications, demonstrating DSP’s utility to address a wide range of biological questions in FFPE and frozen tissues. Interested parties can learn more about DSP by visiting https://www.nanostring.com/products/geomx-digital-spatial-profiler/geomx-dsp-overview/.

About NanoString Technologies, Inc.

NanoString Technologies is a leading provider of life science tools for discovery and translational research. The company’s nCounter^® Analysis System is used in life sciences research and has been cited in more than 4,300 peer-reviewed publications. The nCounter Analysis System offers a cost-effective way to easily profile the expression of hundreds of genes, proteins, miRNAs, or copy number variations, simultaneously with high sensitivity and precision, facilitating a wide variety of basic research and translational medicine applications, including biomarker discovery and validation. The company’s GeoMx^® Digital Spatial Profiler enables highly multiplexed spatial profiling of RNA and protein targets in a variety of sample types, including FFPE tissue sections.

For more information, please visit https://www.nanostring.com/.

NanoString, NanoString Technologies, the NanoString logo, GeoMx, and nCounter are trademarks or registered trademarks of NanoString Technologies, Inc. in various jurisdictions.

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