Astronomy-inspired biomarker analysis predicts response to cancer therapies

By adapting data technologies used to map the universe, researchers have now developed an immunofluorescence imaging technique to produce single cell resolved maps of key biomarkers that can predict the responses of patients to melanoma cancer therapy. The new platform, termed AstroPath and presented in Science, was developed by researchers at The Mark Foundation Center for Advanced Genomics and Imaging and the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, in collaboration with the Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science, all part of Johns Hopkins University (MD, USA). The basis of AstroPath is multiplex immunofluorescent imaging, wherein tissue samples are stained with...