Harvard-Led Team Enhances Mass Cytometry with DNA Nanotechnology

A team led by researchers at the Wyss Institute at Harvard has developed a method that they say significantly increases the sensitivity of mass cytometry and imaging mass cytometry.

The new method, developed in a collaboration that included scientists from MIT and the University of Toronto, is called Amplification by Cyclic Extension (ACE). This innovative approach amplifies protein signals linked to metal isotopes by over 500 times, allowing for the simultaneous detection of more than 30 proteins with high sensitivity. This advancement facilitates the quantitative analysis of rare proteins and the exploration of complex biological changes, particularly in immune cell functions.

The researchers applied ACE to various studies, including the transitions of epithelial cells in breast cancer and the signaling networks in T cells. They successfully captured dynamic changes in T-cell activation and explored how tissue injuries can lead to T-cell paralysis. Furthermore, ACE was utilized to analyze kidney tissue affected by polycystic kidney disease, revealing new insights into cell organization and disease-specific features.

According to Peng Yin, senior author on the paper  published in Nature Biotechnology, “ACE helps to close a crucial gap in cytometric analysis: by enhancing the sensitivity of mass cytometry, it enables a single-cell analysis platform that simultaneously achieves high sensitivity, high multiplexing, and high throughput. The opportunities it opens for investigating single cells in suspension and intact tissues with highly multiplexed and sensitive approaches can provide a much deeper understanding of normal and pathological biological processes.”