Spatial Profiling Lab

Spatial Profiling, also known as ‘spatially resolved transcriptomics’, was voted Nature’s method of the year in 2020 due to the versatility of the technology to address many research questions across a wide variety of areas – Oncology, Neuroscience, Infectious Disease, Inflammation and Immunity.

Spatial profiling uses a combination of immunofluorescence microscopy and next-generation sequencing to quantify gene and/or protein expression in distinct areas of your tissue.

What you'll receive from our facility

Within the facility we currently use Nanostring’s GeoMx Digital Spatial Profiler.  This instrument enables users to:

• Work with FFPE, Fresh Frozen, Tissue Microarrays or slide mounted cell-culture and organoid models
• Use a standard IHC workflow to prepare slides for Spatial Profiling
• Profile multiple, user defined Regions of Interest (ROIs) across their tissue sections
• Use immunofluorescence to drive spatial profiling from distinct tissue regions (Tumour vs TME or white vs grey matter) or specific cell populations (B-cells, T-cells, macrophages, microglia etc)
• Understand Differential Gene Expression across cell types, tissue areas and across different disease states.

The equipment we offer includes:

• Nanostring’s GeoMx Digital Spatial Profiler
• Nanostring’s nCounter Pro Analysis System
• Leica Bond RXm
• HybEZ II Hybridisation System.

Who can use our facilities

• University of Liverpool academic staff
• Researchers from other universities/ research institutions
• Industrial research partners.

What Spatial Profiling can be used for

• Project consultation on spatial proteogenomic projects
• Optimisation of sample preparation and fluorescent morphology marker staining for Region of interest (ROI selection)
• Library preparation for nanostring GeoMx assays 
• Sample preparation and training for nanostring nCounter Pro System.

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