'Game Changer' Method Lets Scientists Peer Into -- and Fly Through -- Mouse Bodies

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: A research team has turned the bodies of dead mice into vivid 3D maps of anatomy, with tissues, nerves, and vessels highlighted in color. The technique, which renders the corpses transparent and then exposes them to fluorescent antibodies that label distinct cell types, could help everything from drug development to understanding the spread of cancer, its creators and other scientists say. The developers, at the Helmholtz Munich research institute, call their technique wildDISCO -- wild because it can work on any "wild type," or normal, mice, and DISCO for 3D imaging of solvent-cleared organs. Building on their previous success at making mouse bodies transparent, the new technique removes cholesterol from the bodies so that a vast array of existing antibodies can penetrate deep into the animals.

"wildDISCO is a game changer -- it allows us to see the hidden highways and byways in the body," says Muzlifah Haniffa, a dermatologist and immunologist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Newcastle University's Biosciences Institute who was not involved in the research. The method should let scientists map a mouse at the cellular level and explore previously hidden links between tissues, like neural connections between organs, says neuroscientist Ali Erturk, director of Helmholtz Munich, who led the work, posted recently as a preprint. His group in Germany has already posted eye-catching videos of "flying" through the 3D anatomy of a mouse with different tissues labeled.

Is it available on Linux?

[Ferocitus]

Or is it a Windows-only game?

Windows only.

[Gravis Zero]

I know you wrote this in jest but I looked at the stack of software involved (ImSpector, arivis Vision4D, Imaris, Syglass) and they are all proprietary and Windows only.

Re:

[burtosis]

Or is it a Windows-only game?

Neither. But I hear they are going to make mint.

Now make it live

[test321]

They had the idea to 3D map a multiplexed immunohistochemistry test, which is certainly impressive in both the idea and the realization. But I would only call it a game changer only when it works on live bodies such that it can be used during surgery or image-guided radiation therapy.

Re:

[willkane]

It works on live bodies, it's just they end up dead.

Surely, it's a "game" changer.

Congrats to the wildDISCO team!

[Rei]

I can only hope that my Boogie-Woogie MRI will be as successful!

Re:

[rabbirta]

It's funny because you're right. How are we going to do this on live humans? We can't - it's a process that kills them. So... neat but not quite what I'm holding out for in terms of the next big medical innovation: the ability to scan the body, star trek-style, maybe even at home.

Make

[RickGikl]

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