The new method could better define the immune response and pave the way for new treatments

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Jeff Moldresearcher in Department of Cell and Molecular Biology At the Karolinska Institutet and one of the research leaders on the study, he sees the new method as a major advance.

Identifying these unique immune receptors is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, especially in autoimmune diseases. In most current methods, you destroy tissue, which partly means that you mix different immune cells, and partly that some cells die in the process. With this method, you can keep the cells in place and you can see cells that would otherwise be lost, he says.

He believes the ability to identify B cells may be the biggest gain with the new method.

T cells have been popular in research, while B cells have been a bit overlooked in the past, especially in the field of cancer. But it is now possible to map how B cells develop and expand directly in tissues, he says.

The research was funded by the Swedish Research Council, the Norwegian Cancer Fund, and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Potential conflicts of interest: Camilla Engblom, Kim Thran, Jeff Mold, Jonas Friesen, Joachim Lundberg, and Kerong Lin are inventors on a patent covering this work. Kamilla Engblom, Kim Thran, Kerong Lin, Alma Andersson, Hussein Tosi, Sami Sarenpaa, Jeff Mold, Joachim Lundberg, and Jonas Friesen are scientific advisors to 10x Genomics, which holds the intellectual property rights to this technology. Jeff Mold owns shares of Pacific Biosciences.

Publishing

“Spatial transcription of B-cell and T-cell receptors reveals lymphocyte clonal dynamics.”Camilla Engblom, Kim Therin, Kerong Lin, Alma Andersson, Hussein Tosi, Shensong Chen, Embla Steiner, Zhang Lu, Giulia Mantovani, Michael Hagman-Jensen, Sami Sarenpaa, Matthias Jangard, Julio Saez Rodriguez, Jakob Mikaelson, Johan Hartmann, Jens Lagergren , Jeff Mold, Joachim Lundeberg, Jonas Friesen. Sciencesonline 7 December 2023, doi: 10.1126/science.adf8486.