Grant: Alliance Grants

Through the standardization and augmentation of Canadian invented and manufactured biotechnology, this multi-disciplinary and collaborative academic-industry partnership aims to overcome a biomedical challenge faced by scientists and clinicians across Canada. By facilitating the use of high-dimension histopathology imaging for immune cell profiling in small tissue biopsies across a network of Canadian hospitals, this project has the potential to elevate the Canadian healthcare environment in order to attract international clinical trials and biopharmaceutical investment and improve the health outcomes of all Canadians. The combined efforts of world experts in high dimension histopathology imaging biotechnology methods, probabilistic machine-learning methods for single cell analysis, and the clinical application of immune profiling will create of a robust automated pipeline for immune diagnostics which will be shared nationwide. This tool will be benchmarked in retrospective, observational and harmonization studies using multiplexed immune cell biomarkers. In concert with the manufacturer of imaging mass cytometry, the standardization and dissemination of image acquisition, processing, and machine learning analysis methods will create a multi-center network capable of providing access to cutting edge diagnostics in Canada.