The Daily Scan

The Scientist: rethinking TB

The Scientist posted a blog entry on rethinking TB (linked here also  as PDF):

New observations of the early stages of tuberculosis infection may turn scientists' understanding of the bug's pathogenesis on its head: clumps of immune cells, called granulomas, long thought to protect hosts from the disease instead appear to be launching pads for the bacteria to further invade an infected individual, according to a study published in Cell this week.

The insight may spawn new approaches to treating TB, which annually infects and kills millions of people worldwide and is increasingly cropping up in antibiotic-resistant forms.

Here in the U.S. we tend to think of TB as a solved problem, but it remains a deadly killer in other parts of the world.  And looking for AFB in lung and spumen samples remains an important (and tedius) part of pathologists' workflow.

Institute for Medical Informatics announces iPhone application for virtual microscopy

A press release from the Institute for Medical Informatics announces their iPhone application for virtual microscopy.  They claim this is the first such application, although about a year ago Aperio announced the capability of viewing digital slides on iPhones.

It wasn’t really an application, we made server-side changes and used the iPhone’s Safari browser. (That was before iPhone applications existed :)

I must tell you, I think this is this is a dancing bear (cool that it works, but not useful).  There just isn’t sufficient real estate on that screen for diagnostic work.  But it does make a spiffy demo…

Side note about the Institute for Medical Informatics' press release; they write "The system consists of a generic high quality microscope slide scanner, of which there are several currently on the market."  I'm not sure any slide scanners would be considered "generic"; definitely there is a large difference in image quality (visible on an iPhone) between them.  Of course I would say: the Aperio ScanScopes' images are the best!

Her-2 expression used for prostate cancer prognosis

We all know the value of measuring Her-2 expression for prognostic purposes in breast cancer, but a new Medscape article (Her-2 Neu Expression and Prostate Cancer [PDF]) reports research that shows it has value for prostate cancer cases also.

Interesting; measuring biomarkers for prognostic purposes to project outcomes and/or guide treatment scenarios is becoming increasingly important.  And of course I have to add, these measurements often can be done accurately and quickly with digital pathology tools :)

Paul Allen: Piece of Mind

The Economist’s “The world in 2009” issue included an interesting article by Paul Allen, co-founder of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, entitled Piece of Mind:

The mystery of how the brain works is the most compelling question in science. We can discover new planets around distant stars and find water on Mars, but over 95% of the workings of the brain remain unexplored and unexplained.

So six years ago I brought together a group of leading neuroscientists to find the basis for an approach that could advance the entire field of brain research. It was clear there needed to be a comprehensive database of information on where genes are turned on (or expressed) in the mouse brain—a map, or atlas, of the brain’s frontiers that would provide more encyclopedic information than any individual lab could afford to generate.

It seemed achievable. With the help of several noted researchers, I founded the Allen Institute for Brain Science in 2003 to undertake this project. Three years later, the institute had completed an atlas of gene expression in the mouse brain. The scientists used state-of-the-art technology to dissect a mouse brain, photographed it sliver section by section, then reassembled it in a computer database that would allow easy access. But it was the speed at which the project was accomplished and what they did with it afterwards that changed the game.

They released it to the public. Over the internet. Free.

The Allen Institute in Seattle is one of Aperio's largest customers and an ongoing source of good feedback and product ideas.  We're proud to help them with this important work.