Nele Haelterman

For as long as she can remember, Marina Sanaki-Matsumiya wanted to understand the mechanisms shaping the bones that form our skeletons. Born with a genetic skeletal disease, the developmental biologist first established an in vitro model to study the transient mouse embryonic tissues called somites that form the spine. She then joined Miki Ebisuya’s laboratory and learned how to grow organoids with human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) that pinch off somites just like they do in the embryo.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating neurodegenerative disease that targets motor neurons, gradually bereaving patients of their ability to control muscle movements. In a recent study, Laura Campisi and colleagues discovered an immune cell signature in patients with early onset ALS that mirrors disease progression and may contribute to neuronal death. These findings could have significant implications for ALS diagnostics, prognostics, and therapeutics.

Perturb-map, a new spatial CRISPR screening technology, combines imaging and gene editing, so that scientists can model tumor heterogeneity in vivo and study its consequences on cell types that interact with cancer cells, such as immune cells or interstitial cells. Therefore, the technology holds great promise to reveal important aspects of cancer biology, including cancer cell evolution and patient responses to treatment.

Daily life in the laboratory has changed a lot over the last decade. The introduction of cutting-edge technologies enables scientists to automate, monitor, and digitize more aspects of their experimental workflows and perform complicated tasks more easily. As smart instruments find their way to the bench, they connect researchers with their experiments, other instruments, and data, transforming the lab of the future into the lab of the present. Discover the smart solutions that empower scientists to take their research to the next level in this infographic.

Wastewater contains a trove of public health-related information. While sewage water can help public health officials monitor a pathogen’s spread in real time, the liquid contains molecules that hamper PCR-based detection. To overcome this, scientists developed detection technologies that are less sensitive to PCR inhibitors, such as Droplet Digital PCR, and integrated them into wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) to track viruses, bacteria, and other microorganisms. Read this ebook to learn about wastewater-based epidemiology—from its conception to its present state and into its future.

As neurodegenerative disorders (NDs) such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease wreak havoc on the brain and on our aging society, scientists race to identify factors that trigger neuronal demise and determine how to stop them. Because neurons can’t be replaced, it is important to detect signs of stress in the brain early, before brain cells pass the point of no return. Scientists recently combined lipidomics with genetics and discovered that lipids are an underestimated player in NDs.

In search for strategies to curb pandemics, scientists strive to understand how pathogens slip past the immune system and wreak havoc on the body. To achieve this goal, researchers study viral infection in models that mimic how different cell types interact with each other, the immune system, or the environment. Organ-on-a-chip models combine tissue engineering with microfluidics to replicate an organ’s biological and biomechanical context. Lung chips have proven instrumental for studying vir...

In a growing number of people who contract COVID-19, symptoms persist long after the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection subsides. COVID-19 and long COVID patients display a variety of symptoms that reveal SARS-CoV-2’s versatility and its long-lasting impact on organ function. While this heterogeneity makes it difficult to study the disease, scientists apply every available technology to investigate the virus’ pathological mechanisms. This webinar highlights the pathways that SARS-CoV-2 hijacks to cause disease.

Single-cell sequencing technologies allow scientists to characterize how individual cell types work together and how this interaction changes with disease or age. Several technologies exist that characterize a single cell’s transcriptome or immune profile, providing researchers with an unprecedented ability to deeply profile a tissue and its cell types. The challenge now lies in selecting the technology that best answers a scientific question and obtaining high quality samples for the application. Watch this webinar to learn how to match sample properties with single-cell sequencing platforms.

On their quest to improve cancer immunotherapies, scientists strive to understand how a patient’s immune function changes through interactions with tumor cells. Chronic stimulation can render T cells exhausted and limit their capacity to respond to treatment. To characterize what drives this change and to identify early indicators of T cell exhaustion, researchers perform functional proteomics on patient immune cells over the course of treatment.

CRISPR-based technology has revolutionized genetics research, and scientists across disciplines now use this genome editing tool to uncover gene function in various model systems. While CRISPR technology is relatively straightforward, many factors influence a large-scale CRISPR screen’s efficiency and success, and the work necessary to validate identified hits. Read this ebook to learn how to design effective CRISPR screens.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a devastating hereditary disease that causes persistent lung infections, which limit a patient’s ability to breathe over time. While recent therapeutic breakthroughs improve patient life expectancy, many ultimately succumb to CF because available therapies fail to protect against respiratory infections. Researchers have struggled to develop better treatments because few preclinical models replicate key CF features and enable rigorous drug testing, but hope is on the ho...

ATAC-seq experiments provide scientists with genome-wide snapshots of a cell type’s epigenetic landscape at the population or single cell level. This powerful technology probes gene regulatory networks with less input material compared to other epigenetic methodologies. However, experimental success depends on multiple factors, including sequencing depth, sample type, and sample preparation quality. Watch this webinar to discover how to best map a cell’s epigenetic landscape.

Extracellular DNA in blood has emerged as a minimally invasive biomarker for detecting disease. Apart from sequencing cell-free DNA fragments, researchers can also obtain information about methylation states and expression patterns. Scientists combine these data to understand the pathogenic processes that lead to DNA shedding and to develop biomarkers that can predict diseases before patients develop symptoms. In this webinar, scientists discuss how they analyze cell-free DNA to identify biomarkers of different diseases and their complications.

CRISPR-Cas9 technology holds promise for treating inherited disorders, but scientists are also exploring its utility for excising integrated viruses. Early reports have demonstrated that CRISPR effectively excises integrated human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV) from cells. But what happens to the excised DNA?