10/12/16  Portland, Ore.

Collaboration to map the pancreatic
tumor microenvironment in 3D

OHSU's Center for Spatial Systems Biomedicine has a new collaboration with ClearLight Diagnostics, a company in Sunnyvale, California, developing tissue-processing and imaging technology for viewing the interactions of proteins, DNA and other cellular components in three dimensions. The goal is to develop biomarkers to map key aspects of the microenvironment of human pancreatic cancer.

"Pancreatic cancers are notoriously difficult to treat," OHSU's Joe Gray, Ph.D., said in a news release. "We believe that tumor-microenvironment interactions strongly influence therapeutic response. We look forward to working with ClearLight Diagnostics to identify resistance-associated interactions through 3D analysis of pancreatic cancers. We hope to use this information to devise therapeutic approaches that counter microenvironmental mediated resistance." Gray directs the Center for Spatial Systems Biomedicine and he is the Knight Cancer Institute's associate director for biophysical oncology.

ClearLight Diagnostics was founded by Karl Deisseroth M.D., Ph.D., a professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. The company's product platform is based on the CLARITY lipid-clearing technique developed by Deisseroth and colleagues at Stanford. This technique renders intact tissue optically transparent and permeable to macromolecules. The company announced the collaboration with OHSU on October 5.