Science Lab

The knowledge portal of Leica Microsystems offers scientific research and teaching material on the subjects of microscopy. The content is designed to support beginners, experienced practitioners and scientists alike in their everyday work and experiments. Explore interactive tutorials and application notes, discover the basics of microscopy as well as high-end technologies – become part of the Science Lab community and share your expertise!

Spectral separation of 11 fluorophores coupled to polystyrene beads on a STELLARIS confocal system.

Multiplexing through Spectral Separation of 11 Colors

Fluorescence microscopy is a fundamental tool for life science research that has evolved and matured together with the development of multicolor labeling strategies in cells tissues and model…

Normal colon imaged with Cell DIVE. 8 biomarkers are shown: CD20, CD4, CD31, SOX9, Vimentin, Ki67, Panck and SMA.

Identifying Fibroblast Phenotypes with Multiplex Imaging

Identifying fibroblasts phenotypes can help researchers understand the relationship between distinct diseases and inflammation mechanisms. Fibroblasts perform a wide variety of immune and repair roles…

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma tissue section imaged with Cell DIVE

Multiplexed Imaging Types, Benefits and Applications

Multiplexed imaging is an emerging and exciting way to extract information from human tissue samples by visualizing many more biomarkers than traditional microscopy. By observing many biomarkers…

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma tissue section imaged with Cell DIVE showing 30 biomarkers

Multiplexed Imaging Glossary

Human tissues contain a many different biomarkers which can be explored to reveal the workings of biological pathways and interrogate disease states. Recent technological advances have made it…

Normal skin imaged with Cell DIVE, 11 biomarkers shown.

Tumor MHC Expression and Intralesional IL2 Response in Melanoma

Genomics profiling and Cell DIVE multiplex imaging allows researchers to understand the immune cell phenotypes that most strongly predict response to IL2 immunotherapy in melanoma patients suffering…

Colon Adenocarcinoma. Four biomarkers shown: NaK, CD8, CD4 and Sma1. T-Cells shown in red and yellow.

Multiplex Imaging Reveals Survival Markers after Cancer Care

Colorectal cancer is a high incidence and high mortality cancer. Currently, postoperative chemotherapy benefits only a minority of patients, and thus, new tools are necessary to screen patients and…

Colon adenocarcinoma with 13 biomarkers shown

Hyperplex Cancer Tissue Analysis at Single Cell Level with Cell DIVE

The ability to study how lymphoma cell heterogeneity is influenced by the cells’ response to their microenvironment, especially at the mutational, transcriptomic, and protein levels. Protein…

Image: Adult rat brain. Neurons (Alexa Fluor488, green), Astrocytes (GFAP, red), Nuclei (DAPI, blue). Image courtesy of Prof. En Xu, Institute of Neurosciences and Department of Neurology of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, China.

Multicolor Microscopy: The Importance of Multiplexing

The term multiplexing refers to the use of multiple fluorescent dyes to examine various elements within a sample. Multiplexing allows related components and processes to be observed in parallel,…

A New Method for Convenient and Efficient Multicolor Imaging

The technique combining hyperspectral unmixing and phasor analysis was developed to simplify the process of getting images from a sample labeled with multiple fluorophores. This aggregate method…