![]() “Drug libraries attack this specific mechanism or that specific mechanism, so by comparing the drug libraries and a specific patient's structure and function profiles, you can actually design personalized drugs for that specific patient.” “You can use this information to design precision therapies and to find the best drugs for that specific person,” Coskun said. Understanding structure and function in conjunction also can pinpoint how cells are using energy, depleting oxygen, or otherwise working in the body, he noted. “That is information you can use to understand how tonsils respond to outside foreign objects that are interfering our bodies,” Coskun said, “and then how those specific anatomical regions in tonsils use their metabolites and lipid content to respond to them.” In experiments looking at nearly 200 different kinds of metabolites and lipids, the researchers uncovered a unique “code” that identified where specific lipids related to different kinds of cell function were depleted. It also discovered lower concentrations of specific kinds of fat molecules called lipids that the B-cells use to proliferate and create antibodies. The team’s spatial map showed the locations of T-cell and B-cell concentrations. Tonsils are one of the first areas that sense a foreign bacteria or virus, and the immune cells there warn the body to prepare to fight an invader. “When you look at microscale things, they're just two-dimensional slices most of the time.”Ĭoskun and his team studied B-cells in tonsils, important harbingers of a potential infection. ![]() That's not done at the microscale, unfortunately,” Coskun said. “You've seen in hospitals how MRIs are done - they can make entire body 3D. They call the technique a “3D Spatially resolved Metabolomic profiling Framework.” They described their unique approach - combining two disparate measurements into a single test and processing a huge amount of data to make a 3D map - Jan. Bringing the two together in a unique, single measurement is one of the advantages here,” he said.Ĭoskun’s team used tools from data science to turn all of that data into a 3D map of the tonsil tissue, which Coskun said is more accurate since the tissues are three-dimensional themselves. “Typically, the metabolites are measured in one experiment, and these protein-specific labels are measured in another, separate experiment. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. But when we are doing that, we are looking at more granular features, which molecular distributions are around, and how do they really change within this tonsil tissue,” said Ahmet Coskun, Bernie Marcus Early Career Professor in the Wallace H. “An analogy to our system is actually geography: We create the geography of tonsils - where are the valleys, where are the mountains. And instead of doing this on a single, two-dimensional “slice” of tissue, they used data from about 150 slices to create a 3D map of the tissue. In a study of human tonsil tissue, the researchers combined a labeling scheme using isotopes to “tag” specific kinds of cells - in this case, immune cells such as T-cells and B-cells - with imaging mass spectrometry that can identify metabolites, the molecules around those cells that are used for various metabolic functions. The procedure marries techniques from chemistry, biology, and data science and could help doctors design precision therapies in the coming years for patients who aren’t responding to treatment. Whitaker Biomedical Engineering BuildingĪ newly published approach to profiling human tissue samples can build a 3D picture of structure and function at the molecular level. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and BioscienceĮmory School of Medicine and Research Centers ![]() Master of Biomedical Innovation and Developmentīiomaterials and Regenerative Technologiesīiomedical Informatics and Systems Modeling Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering ![]()
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