Vall d'Hebron Talks by VHIR 'Live imaging: Insights into immunotherapy function, tumor heterogeneity and invasion'

Speaker: Dr. María Alieva, research group at the Sols-Morreale Biomedical Research Institute (CSIC-UAM)

By offering spatial, molecular, and morphological data over time, live-cell imaging provides a deeper comprehension of cellular and signaling events pivotal in cancer-related processes, such as tumor heterogeneity, treatment response, and tumor invasion. This dynamic cellular response holds promise in refining clinical outcomes by pinpointing biomarkers or actionable targets to enhance therapeutic effectiveness. Nevertheless, live imaging of intricate systems, like co-culture assays or intravital microscopy and organotypic brain slices, generates big and complex datasets, necessitating tailored analytical pipelines to interpret the vast amount of dynamic features captured. Dr. Alieva's group, imAIgene lab, specializes in computational approaches for dynamic imaging analysis. Their focus lies in gaining insights into various aspects of cancer biology, including cellular immunotherapy mode-of-action against tumors, tumor heterogeneity in treatment response, and tumor invasion. In this seminar, Dr. Alieva will highlight several recent research applications that offer biological insights into these topics. These applications encompass a range of techniques, from single-cell dynamic classification and dynamic cellular interactome analysis to the utilization of organoid models for studying intratumor heterogeneity. Additionally, the lab employs multi-omics approaches that integrate imaging with single-cell transcriptomic information, to leverage the results from dynamic imaging assays to improve therapeutic efficacy and facilitate biomarker discovery.

Host: Dr. Juan Ángel Recio,  Head of group Biomedical Research in Melanoma (VHIR)