Research overview
Human cells can encode tens of thousands of messenger RNAs, and the capability to effectively characterize this diversity in 3D has yet to be fully harnessed. Moreover, to perform molecular mapping, current technologies are based on high tech instrumentation, lithography, tissue sectioning and/or advanced fluorescence microscopy.
The goal of the VOLUMINEX project is to upend the paradigm of imaging with expensive instrumentation and replace it with off-the-shelf reagent kits, sequencing, and software to produce a fully capable 3D molecular imaging technology.
The science driving our initiative comes from the fledgling field of sequencing-based microscopy (known as DNA microscopy, network-based imaging, or imaging-by-sequencing). The idea is to use packets of DNA as voxels to capture information about the molecular composition at each location of the sample. By constructing a 3D network of such voxels, we are able to use sequencing to infer the spatial structure of the sample without the need for microscopy.
We envision a future, driven by falling sequencing and computing costs, where VOLUMINEX-based advanced 3D transcriptomic tissue mapping becomes universally accessible, commonplace in research, and a routine in clinical diagnostics. This would improve patient care, allowing, for example, for better cancer diagnostics and monitoring, personalized medicine and new discoveries.
