According to the company, MALDI HiPLEX-IHC is a breakthrough in multiomics imaging by combining targeted protein expression spatial profiling with unbiased small molecule MALDI imaging to co-localize proteins and small molecules such as glycans, lipids, metabolites, or xenobiotics.

In addition to mapping tens to over 100 targeted proteins with high-plex peptide tags, MALDI HiPLEX-IHC can track signaling pathways such as glycosylation, observe lipid spatial profiles for tumor microenvironment segmentation, or simultaneously observe how drugs affect both protein and metabolic states.

"From the perspective of a lab heavily invested in cellular signaling processes in cancer biology, MALDI HiPLEX-IHC is a game changer allowing integration of mass spectrometry imaging with cell biology. We will be using this technology for multiomic N-glycan and collagen imaging studies to understand aggressive breast cancers," said Peggi Angel, PhD, professor of cell and molecular pharmacology and experimental therapeutics at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Images from a single fresh-frozen sagittal mouse brain section showing three representative lipids associated with neurological function, three of the 12plex targeted neurological proteins from the MALDI HiPLEX-IHC experiment on the same tissue section, and a true multiomic overlay of a representative lipid and two proteins. Images were rendered using the new multiomic module for SCiLS Lab 2023a. Image courtesy of Business Wire.