Abstract Description Detecting clinically relevant biomarkers in cancer tissues provides key insights into unique tumor characteristics, allowing for personalized and effective therapies. Pathologists widely use immunohistochemistry (IHC) to determine appropriate treatment for patients, but are limited by low plexity, quantitation and false signal detection due to signal amplification. Imaging Mass Cytometry™ (IMC™) technology is a multiplexed spatial imaging technique that incorporates quantitative assessment of 40-plus biomarkers simultaneously on the same slide without signal amplification. We performed a comparison of IHC and IMC technology using clinically relevant low-abundance biomarkers PD-1, PD-L1, CTLA-4 and LAG-3. We stained serial sections of tissues and generated IHC and IMC data. A board-certified pathologist performed an assessment. Our results demonstrate equivalent or improved capability of IMC technology to detect relative expression of markers with intact dynamic range of signal. Quantitative multiplexed analysis provided further insights about expression on specific immune and tumor cells and their spatial coordinates relative to relevant cell populations. Biological assessment of tissues using IMC offers a significant advantage over traditional IHC methods. The ability of IMC technology to provide high-dimensional, spatially resolved data makes it a powerful tool for clinical and translational application. For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures. Topic Categories Tumor Immunology: Cellular Responses and Tumor Microevironment (TIME)
Raza et al. (2025) studied this question.