Beatson Cancer Charity Funds Next-Generation Digital Slide Scanner

Cancer research can be broadly divided into two key areas; work to understand how cancer originates and develops and the race to find a cure. At the heart of all this research is human tissue, which has been proven to be a pivotal resource in understanding exactly how the body works, why cancer might occur, and what the possible treatment options are/could be.

The Glasgow Tissue Research Facility (GTRF) works closely with the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Biorepository to provide cancer researchers with a central facility for tissue-based research. It also supports cancer researchers across the West of Scotland to help bridge the gap between pre-clinical and clinical research.

The GTRF digital pathology services enable researchers to visualise tumours. Traditionally, tumours are cut into thin sections that are placed on a glass slide, enabling researchers to stain the tissue for a protein of interest and observe it under a microscope. However, advances in digital and computational pathology now require the glass slides to be digitalised into dynamic digital images. Digital scanners can capture an entire glass slide, under bright field or fluorescent conditions, at a magnification comparable to a microscope. Artificial Intelligence tools can also be applied to assist in the interpretation and quantification of biomarker expression within tissue sections.

Beatson Cancer Charity awarded a £76,000 grant to help the GTRF to replace its old digital scanner with a new, next generation digital slider scanner (the Pannoramic1000). This highly efficient scanner with a market-beating capacity of 1000 slides, is capable of scanning 100 slides per hour at an incredibly high magnification level. The new scanner will be able to process more slides in a much quicker time frame and support researchers with the growing demand for Artificial Intelligence image-based research.

This investment will help to accelerate the findings from clinical trials and translational research projects into the clinic for the benefit of Beatson patients.

For more information about this project, Email: funding@beatsoncancercharity.org

For further enquiries call our funding team on 0141 212 0505.