Precision-cut tissue slices (PCTS)

Dr Astero Klampatsa (PhD) is a Team Leader in Cancer Immunotherapy at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK and a Senior Lecturer in King’s College London, UK. She focuses on developing novel CAR T cell therapies for mesothelioma and lung cancer, as well as the immunobiology of these malignancies for identification of markers of response to immunotherapy. In this webinar, Dr. Klampatsa will discuss how the Compresstome® was used to create precision-cut tumor slices (PCTS) as an ex vivo model for immunotherapy research.

Visikol is a contract research services company focused on leveraging advanced imaging, 3D cell culture assays and digital pathology to accelerate the drug discovery and development process. In this webinar, Visikol explains the need for in vitro liver models to study livery injury. They demonstrate the standard assay format for creating precision-cut liver slices (PCLS), and explain how the Compresstome® VF-310-0Z vibrating microtome helps create uniform tissue slices that can be meaningfully compared between treatments. Visikol goes through how to use the Compresstome® step-by-step for making PCLS.

The Compresstome^® has been widely used by researchers worldwide for making precision-cut lung slices (PCLS). The Compresstome^® uses agarose embedding prior to slicing to allow for the preservation of open alveoli and better tissue compliance. The video above shows Compresstome^® sectioning PCLS for immunostaining to visualize the localization of various immune cell types in the lung. This protocol can be extended to visualize the location and function of many different cell types under a variety of conditions.

Dr. Tsilingiri is working on tumor immunotherapy and using the Compresstome vibrating microtome to examine the interaction between tumor tissues and autologous lymph node cells in slice cultures. This work is being carried out in the frame of an EU-funded Consortium, Tumour-LNoC (Tumour-Lymph node on a chip), with the ultimate goal of mimicking the metastatic process on a chip and monitor metastasizing cells in real time.

Dr. Koziol-White showcased the versatility of the precision cut lung slice system that she has developed and utilized to study airway function for almost two decades.

Dr. Claudia Loebel’s research involves the development of PCLS to probe mechanisms of early epithelial cell differentiation during lung injury and fibrosis.

Dr. Chioccioli:

• Described motility of alveolar stem cells as a new injury response mechanism in the lung and reveal properties of stem cell motility at high cellular resolution
• Explained early highly dynamic behavior of AT2 cells post injury, including migration within and between alveoli
• Characterized the emergence of at least three distinct morphokinetic AT2 cell states associated with AT2 stem cell injury response
• Shown how small molecule-based inhibition of Rho-associated protein kinase (ROCK) pathway significantly reduced motility of AT2 stem cells following injury and reduced expression of Krt8, a known marker of intermediate progenitor cells