BACKGROUND: High-risk neuroblastoma accounts for 15% of pediatric cancer mortality, with survival rates stagnating at 50%. While spatial transcriptomics (ST) offers a path to understanding the tumor microenvironment and therapy resistance, current commercial platforms are either cost-prohibitive, low resolutions and/or lack sensitivity required for precious clinical samples.
AIMS: To develop a high-resolution, cost-effective ST platform (approximately €100/array) tailored for investigating the spatial effects of innovative targeted therapies in neuroblastoma.
METHODS: Our platform utilizes custom-printed microarrays featuring four subarrays, each containing ± 85,000 spots (13.
BACKGROUND: High-risk neuroblastoma tumors respond differently to therapy due to their unique molecular makeup and tumor microenvironment. Therefore, molecularly profiling of these tumors helps tailoring treatment. Spatial transcriptomics enables detailed transcriptional profiling while preserving spatial context. We are working on a customized version of this technology using a DNA microarray printer and an in-house developed library preparation protocol.
AIMS: We aim to develop a novel, cost-effective spatial transcriptomics platform, providing an unbiased transcriptome view at single-cell resolution.
Neuroblastoma is a childhood cancer of the sympathetic nervous system. Recent studies have shown that neuroblastoma tumors are composed of two cell identities, i.e. the adrenergic and mesenchymal identity. Both identities are driven by a core regulatory transcriptional circuitry, which acts as an autoregulatory positive feedforward loop, to delineate the cell identity through regulation of its target genes. We identified the long non-coding RNA NESPR to be specifically expressed in neuroblastoma cells of the adrenergic cell identity.