Combine the advantages of optical microscopy with the magnifying power of electronic microscopy. It is a real revolution for technology and study of the IMEGING, the so-called Light-Electron Microscopy or Clem correlatives.
The laboratoryinaugurated on the Humanitas University campus, a few tens of meters from the workshops and the hospital departments of IRCCS Humanitas Clinical Institute, is located within the Roberto Rocca Innovation Building and is Tthe first in Europe to be installed within a research hospital. The goal is to apply the technological power of Clem-born in the world of materials and study of the chemical-physical structure of molecules-looking for disease care.
What the Clem proposes
The Clem technology for the study of biological processes in 4 dimensions was born with the aim of combining two complementary approaches to the study of biology: on the one hand, Fluorescence optical microscopywhich allows you to observe dynamic events in live fabrics on the other electronic microscopywhich offers a nanometric resolution to analyze the structure of the cellular components.
Here lies another character of novelty of the Humanitas project: traditional electronic microscopy looks at 2D images. Pieve Emanuele’s laboratory uses a technology – called EM volume – which allows Watch data in 3 dimensions with nanometric resolution (a nanometer is a millionth of a millimeter). How to observe a city street passing from the perspective of a road map – flat and from above – to the point of view of a pedestrian walking on that road: three -dimensional vision, hyper -treated.
Another key element was the introduction of the techniques of Crio-Microscopywhich are based on the “freezing“Instantaneous of biological samples through high pressure liquid nitrogen, which avoids ice formation and thus preserves its structural integrity. Thanks to this combination, today it is possible to observe a live biological event, locate it precisely and then block it over time To analyze it in detail and 3D. In short, it is a sort of four -dimensional mobile CT, also counting the temporal one.
What could change
Thanks to this innovative approach, we aim to find answers to the complexity of the questions that come from the hospital wards and the research workshops. At the base, the awareness that what happens in the micro – at the subcellular level inside fabrics – has effects on the macro: The symptoms of the disease.
To guide this ambitious transformation, in collaboration with the Medici and researchers of Humanitas, there is Edoardo d’Imprimo, who returned from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Embl) of Heidelberg to start the new Clem Laboratory of Humanitas.
“Clem represents a new frontier for biology and medicine, because it allows you to connect function and structure, macro and micro. In an era in which precision medicine requires an increasingly profound and detailed understanding of biological processes, which are highly complex, the Clem combines” the film “of cell dynamics with the snapshot of molecular detail of the structures involved. Artificial and calculation power, to provide data doctors, a quantitative response, and not only images “
He explains D’Imprimo.
The application of large scale Clem technology involves another fundamental challenge: the management of the huge amount of data generated by the tools. To deal with this need, Humanitas University has enhanced its high -performance calculation center (the so -called HPC, High Performance Computing). This advanced system not only allows you to store the collected data, but also to analyze it in real time to extract quantitative information, crucial to support the work of the Humanitas clinical and translational research groups. Already today, especially as part of the study of the resistance to antibiotics and bacteria as well as the inflammation in neuroscience, collaborations have started with structures already operating. And in the future there are further applications of this approach.
