In-Depth Immune-Oncology Studies of the Tumor Microenvironment in a Humanized Melanoma Mouse Model.

The presence and interaction of immune cells in the tumor microenvironment is of significant importance and has a great impact on disease progression and response to therapy. Hence, their identification is of high interest for prognosis and treatment decisions. Besides detailed phenotypic analyses of immune, as well as tumor cells, spatial analyses is an important parameter in the complex interplay of neoplastic and immune cells-especially when moving into focus efforts to develop and validate new therapeutic strategies. Ex vivo analysis of tumor samples by immunohistochemistry staining methods conserves spatial information is restricted to single markers, while flow cytometry (disrupting tissue into single cell suspensions) provides access to markers in larger numbers. Nevertheless, this comes at the cost of scarifying morphological information regarding tissue localization and cell-cell contacts. Further detrimental effects incurred by, for example, tissue digestion include staining artifacts. Consequently, ongoing efforts are directed towards methods that preserve, completely or in part, spatial information, while increasing the number of markers that can potentially be interrogated to the level of conventional flow cytometric methods. Progression in multiplex immunohistochemistry in the last ten years overcame the limitation to 1-2 markers in classical staining methods using DAB with counter stains or even pure chemical staining methods. In this study, we compared the multiplex method Chipcytometry to flow cytometry and classical IHCP using DAB and hematoxylin. Chipcytometry uses frozen or paraffin-embedded tissue sections stained with readily available commercial fluorophore-labeled antibodies in repetitive cycles of staining and bleaching. The iterative staining approach enables sequential analysis of a virtually unlimited number of markers on the same sample, thereby identifying immune cell subpopulations in the tumor microenvironment in the present study in a humanized mouse melanoma model.

Stability of Alkyl Chain-Mediated Lipid Anchoring in Liposomal Membranes.

Lipid exchange among biological membranes, lipoprotein particles, micelles, and liposomes is an important yet underrated phenomenon with repercussions throughout the life sciences. The premature loss of lipid molecules from liposomal formulations severely impacts therapeutic applications of the latter and thus limits the type of lipids and lipid conjugates available for fine-tuning liposomal properties. While cholesterol derivatives, with their irregular lipophilic surface shape, are known to readily undergo lipid exchange and interconvert, e.g., with serum, the situation is unclear for lipids with regular, linear-shaped alkyl chains. This study compares the propensity of fluorescence-labeled lipid conjugates of systematically varied lengths to migrate from liposomal particles consisting mainly of egg phosphatidyl choline 3 (EPC3) and cholesterol into biomembranes. We show that dialkyl glyceryl lipids with chains of 18-20 methylene units are inherently stable in liposomal membranes. In contrast, C16 lipids show some lipid exchange, albeit significantly less than comparable cholesterol conjugates. Remarkably, the C18 chain length, which confers noticeable anchor stability, corresponds to the typical chain length in biological membranes.