NanoString: Mobile Digital Spatial Profiling Platform

Sponsor:

Project Name:

Mobile Digital Spatial Profiling Platform

Students:

Armin Rouz, bioengineering
Peter Schultz, bioengineering
Eliot Sosin, bioengineering
Grant Tremel, bioengineering

Faculty Adviser:

Xiaohu Gao, Professor, Department of Bioengineering
Chris Neils, Senior Lecturer, Department of Bioengineering

About the Project:

Nanostring developed the Digital Spatial Profiling (DSP) platform to make high-throughput measurements of local protein and RNA expression levels within heterogeneous tissue samples. In contrast to the sequential analysis of multi-target immunohistochemistry slides, the DSP platform is paired with Nanostring's optical barcoding technology to sample all analytes on a single slide. The existing benchtop instrument includes imaging and fluidic components to capture spatial context down to single cell resolution, while current nCounter® instruments provide the quantification with a multiplexing capacity of up to 800 targets. The student team developed a proof-of-concept mobile phone based DSP platform for lower resolution applications. The smaller platform, simpler procedure, and much lower cost mobile system could greatly increase access to high-plex quantitative analysis of bio-samples for medical and scientific applications.