IMC Trending Topics and Publications
You want to get the most out of your precious samples, to answer complex questions through deep interrogation and analysis of relevant data, to understand the role of spatial biology in health and disease and to publish and showcase your research results.
The Power of IMC
IMC Trending Topics
IMC Trending Topics articles, toolbox, news and FAS Favorite feature the great work performed by IMC users.
IMC Publications and Posters
Find current IMC bibliographies and posters, read the new FAS Favorite in publications, view charts that demonstrate the published use of IMC.
The Power of IMC
- Subcellular resolution: allows accurate and quantifiable phenotyping and cell function assessment
- No autofluorescence: reliable results when working with highly autofluorescent tissues like lung, gut, brain and skin
- No time-consuming cyclic protocols: high-plex protein detection from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded or frozen tissue sections
- Proven: hundreds of hands-on users and more than 130 peer-review published references
IMC Trending Topics Articles
These articles cover the latest research and publications involving IMC, exploring topics such as immune landscape investigation, biomarker discovery and methods associated with therapeutics development.
Immuno-oncology TRENDING topics ARTICLE |
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Immuno-oncology is a burgeoning field with many promising approaches to improving a patient’s outcome through immunotherapy. IMC has been influential in understanding underlying mechanisms of immune response and in developing strategies for new treatments. |
IMC Trending Topics Toolbox
Recommended resources grouped to provide you with knowledge, ideas and tips on selected topics.

Robust cell segmentation is essential for high-plex image analysis. The resources below address key cell segmentation challenges. They also help if you are unfamiliar with the general why and how of cell segmentation. Included is information about the Maxpar® IMC Cell Segmentation Kit, which facilitates an end-to-end workflow for single-cell data analytics and is an important first step to improve high-plex cell segmentation regardless of which pipeline is used.
- IMC Forum event: View the two-hour IMC Forum: Current Methods and Future Views for Effective Cell Segmentation in High-Plex Imaging, which includes presentations and panel discussions about cell segmentation.
- Webinar: From the October 2021 IMC Summit, see two presentations from Data Analysis Session I: The Importance of Cell Segmentation in the Data Analysis Pipeline. The first presentation is from Hartland Jackson, PhD. The second is a joint talk by Jay Hirota, PhD, and Kjetil Ask, PhD.
- Information: Get more information from the Maxpar IMC Cell Segmentation Kit Information Sheet or the FAQ document.
- FAS Presentation and Q&A: Watch this short Zoom presentation, Getting the Most Out of Your Data Analysis, in which FAS Wendell Smith, PhD, discusses the cell segmentation pipeline.

Staining for tissue imaging on the Hyperion™ Imaging System is similar to standard immunohistochemistry techniques in terms of tissue collection, tissue processing and the staining itself. Optimized staining is important in order to carry out extensive characterization of the tissue microenvironment. There are numerous examples of panels of up to 40 markers described for formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) human tumor sections, and a protocol for frozen tissue sections is also available.
- Protocol: Standard BioTools™ recommended FFPE tissue staining protocol.
- Protocol: Standard BioTools recommended protocol for staining frozen tissue.
- Publication: “A 40-marker panel for high dimensional characterization of cancer immune microenvironments by Imaging Mass Cytometry™.” (Ijsselsteijn et al.)
- Publication: “High dimensional Imaging Mass Cytometry™ panel to visualize the tumor immune microenvironment contexture." (Elaldi et al.)
- Webinar: In a webinar sponsored by Cell Signaling Technology®, Noel de Miranda, Principal Investigator of the immunogenomics group at Leiden University Medical Center, discusses critical considerations for optimizing Imaging Mass Cytometry.
Featured NEWS
IMC Trending Topics News
Check this feature regularly to see a current selection of exciting news and stories about researchers who are using IMC to make an impact.
JULY 2023
- In a presentation given at the 2023 Kidney Cancer Research Summit (KCRS), Hartland Jackson, PhD, an investigator at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute of Sinai Health and an associate scientist at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, discussed strategies for mapping spatially resolved immune cell networks in clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Such networks may be appropriate targets for immunotherapy and how IMC can be used for spatial immune profiling.
- Biomedical Picture of the Day posted by the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences: Using Imaging Mass Cytometry and single-cell RNA sequencing helps in understanding the composition and spatial changes of the ulcerative colitis ecosystem, in which inflammatory macrophages replace resident macrophages. Read the original article.
JUNE 2023
- A recent study using Imaging Mass Cytometry, led by surgeon-scientist Juliet Emamaullee, MD, PhD, found that T cells expressing programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) were present in biopsies from children who recovered from acute liver failure without needing a liver transplant, but not in those who received a transplant.
“These cells are relatively rare; they’re less than 1% of the cells that we see in the biopsy,” Dr. Emamaullee says. “It’s only because of this technology and this advanced analysis that we were able to find them. Using older techniques, you would never know they were there.”
The team presented its findings in plenary sessions at the 2023 International Congress of the International Liver Transplantation Society and at the 2023 American Transplant Congress. - BNA2023 video | Advantages and disadvantages of Imaging Mass Cytometry in Alzheimer’s disease studies: In an interview recorded at a British Neuroscience Association (BNA) conference, Alessia Caramello, PhD, Imperial College London, commented on the advantages and challenges of using Imaging Mass Cytometry to study neuronal subpopulations in Alzheimer’s disease.
MAY 2023
- Sabelo Lukhele, PhD, David Brooks, PhD, and team at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre have figured out a way to help T cells overcome exhaustion and sustain antitumor activity. Their new published study paves the way for enhanced cancer therapies by revealing a key driver of immune exhaustion.
The team suggests that targeting interferon regulatory factor 2 (IRF2), which drives exhaustion of the immune system during immunotherapy, might be key to overcoming treatment failure. - The McGill University teams that authored two recently published papers in Nature were the focus of Nature Research Highlights. The article nicely sums up the studies and how the landscape of the spatial tumor immune microenvironment adds prognostic value to identifying clinically relevant predictive immune markers in lung and brain tumors.
FAS Favorite
Check in regularly to see a featured publication recommendation from one of our expert FAS team members.

MAY | JUNE
Wendell Smith, Senior Field Applications Scientist: Proteomics, recommends a Frontiers in Immunology publication by N. Ung et al., “Adaptation of Imaging Mass Cytometry to explore the single cell alloimmune landscape of liver transplant rejection.”
Principal Investigator: Juliet Emamaullee, MD, PhD, FRCSC, FACS, attending physician and assistant professor of clinical surgery from the surgery department at Keck School of Medicine of USC.
Why Wendell recommends this publication: “I like this paper because it highlights our technology in a new area for Standard BioTools concerning our IMC platform: organ transplant rejection. This is an area of extreme importance both clinically and scientifically. The publication specifically utilizes our IMC technology to investigate the alloimmune microenvironment at a single-cell resolution during clinical rejection episodes.
What is also interesting about this paper is it was the first publication that I am aware of that utilized a set IMC panel that I helped design for the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) imaging core. The authors used this panel to characterize the immune landscape of chronic rejection (CR) in clinical tissue samples obtained from liver transplant recipients. This demonstrates how well a validated panel can work if cores choose to establish an appropriately validated panel.”
IMC Publications
Join the hundreds of researchers gaining deep spatial insights using Imaging Mass Cytometry.
Get the complete IMC bibliography now, with over 130 peer-reviewed publications.
See more than 130 Publications
More than 50 publications highlight the use of high-plex imaging by IMC to investigate the spatial biology of the complex tumor microenvironment and its role in furthering cancer and immuno-oncology research.

IMC Posters
Learn more technical details about IMC by viewing some of our recently presented posters.
As of December 31, 2021, there are 138 total peer-reviewed publications for IMC, with 63 from 2021, more than double the number added in 2020.
Immuno-oncology and cancer were the leading category with 37% of IMC publications in this research area. In addition to IMC being used in a wide range of applications, significant work has been done to develop methods and data analysis approaches.
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