An Integrative Platform for Three-dimensional Quantitative Analysis of Spatially Heterogeneous Metastasis Landscapes.

ABSTRACT: Metastatic microenvironments are spatially and compositionally heterogeneous. This seemingly stochastic heterogeneity provides researchers great challenges in elucidating factors that determine metastatic outgrowth. Herein, we develop and implement an integrative platform that will enable researchers to obtain novel insights from intricate metastatic landscapes. Our two-segment platform begins with whole tissue clearing, staining, and imaging to globally delineate metastatic landscape heterogeneity with spatial and molecular resolution. The second segment of our platform applies our custom-developed SMART 3D (Spatial filtering-based background removal and Multi-chAnnel forest classifiers-based 3D ReconsTruction), a multi-faceted image analysis pipeline, permitting quantitative interrogatio

SUBMITTER: Guldner IH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4828720 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature