Research

Institute for Multidisciplinary Translational Medicine

Convening multidisciplinary scientific excellence to accelerate the translation of discovery to patients and the community

The University of Georgia School of Medicine has proposed an Institute for Multidisciplinary Translational Medicine (MTM Institute). The institute’s mission is to serve as a central unit that convenes researchers across UGA by providing an intellectual and physical resources infrastructure to advance human and animal health and medicine.

Goals

By providing an intellectual and physical resource infrastructure to advance human health and medicine, and in collaboration with colleges, units, centers, and institutes at UGA, the MTM Institute:

1.  Accelerates the translation of scientific discoveries to patients and the community: To establish a seamless process and infrastructure that will accelerate the bidirectional translation of scientific discoveries from the laboratory to the clinic to increase patient cure rates, survival, and quality of life by building an integrated bench-to-bedside-to-bench ecosystem.
2. Serves as a scientific collaborative core: To convene units that collectively, in collaboration with the School of Medicine, provide an integrative approach for the benefit of both humans and animals, and link healthy ecosystems to healthy communities.
3. Establishes an infrastructure that will promote and facilitate multidisciplinary translational and clinical research excellence: Through a research infrastructure that provides state-of-the-art resources and human-relevant models and approaches to investigators among the UGA Colleges, units, and institutes, MTM will facilitate and promote multidisciplinary team science approaches, enabling the exchange of knowledge among basic and translational researchers and clinical faculty.
4. Promotes innovation: Enhance innovation and entrepreneurship to revolutionize health care practices and significantly impact patient outcomes.
5. Provides education and training: 1) Provide multidisciplinary translational research training programs for trainees and new investigators; and 2) Develop a human-centered medicine curriculum for undergraduates and graduates in novel and emerging areas of biomedical research excellence at UGA.

Spatial Biology and Integrated Genomics Shared Resources (SBIG)

Spatial biology is the study of individual cells and molecules in two- or three-dimensional visualization and enables the investigation of interactions among cells within their unique tumor or organ tissue ecosystem. Through continued collaboration and partnership with Bruker and RareCyte, the SBIG is one of only a few shared resources nationally that offer research investigators access to the complete suite of state-of-the-art spatial biology instrumentation, including the CosMx™ Spatial Molecular Imager (SMI), the GeoMx® Digital Spatial Profiler, and RareCyte’s Orion.

Service rates can be found here. 

To access these resources or for more information, please contact our team at [email protected].

RareCyte Orion™

RareCyte’s Orion™ is an imaging platform that streamlines translational discovery by bypassing the standard limitations of fluorescence imaging. With up to 20 fluorescence channels at their disposal, researchers can profile complex tissue samples based on protein expression with one round of staining followed by one automated scan. This allows researchers to visually distinguish different cell types within a tissue sample, creating a color-coded image of how cells are organized. Pairing the high-plex capabilities of Orion™ with its efficient workflow allows for high-throughput analysis of large-cohort studies, which expedites the discovery of prognostic markers and therapeutic targets that can be translated to the clinic. Researchers can perform in-depth spatial analysis and obtain quantitative results from metadata acquired with each high-resolution image. With Glencoe’s OMERO plus™, a cloud-based image database, researchers can access and analyze this data from anywhere. All in all, RareCyte’s Orion™ is a novel platform in translational research and a pivotal tool for maximizing clinically impactful discovery.

NanoString CosMx®

Similar to how protein expression can be used to image tissues, so too can mRNA expression, and the CosMx® Spatial Molecular Imager (SMI) from NanoString does both at a remarkably advanced level. CosMx® pairs RNA probes, which bind to complementary, pre-determined RNA targets, and fluorescence barcoding to detect up to 18,000 different mRNA transcripts over the entire tissue. Compared to other imaging platforms, CosMx® is highly sensitive, detecting transcripts with relatively low expression at a subcellular resolution. Using the specific XY coordinates of active genes within the tissue, researchers can study the organization of specific cell populations and define individual cell types, cell states, and cell-cell interactions in the context of their location. Additionally, the CosMx® workflow maintains tissue integrity and offers multiomic capabilities, enabling samples to be further analyzed for the expression of up to 64 proteins. Performing such high-resolution analysis is critical when investigating processes such as disease progression, and imaging with CosMx® adds another level of biological accuracy by providing spatial context.

NanoString GeoMx®

The Nanostring GeoMx® Digital Spatial Profiler is another highly insightful platform that enables researchers to analyze gene and protein activity across biologically relevant regions of tissue. GeoMx® allows users to select distinct compartments within tissue samples based on cell type, geometric boundaries, or contour plots and then analyze these regions with notably high sensitivity, detecting up to 1200 proteins and 18,000 mRNA transcripts. This platform is unique in that it can accommodate large-cohort studies through its high-throughput workflow while optimizing reproducibility through its flexible profiling capabilities. Taking advantage of this reproducibility, researchers can analyze homologous regions across multiple samples to elucidate meaningful expression patterns within specific tissue types. These factors work in concert to make GeoMx® an exceptionally versatile tool for driving translational research and facilitating clinical discovery.

Parhelia Spatial Station™

The emergence of high-plex spatial multiomics has been instrumental in the field of translational research, but with its inherently complex workflows, variability in sample preparation is highly likely, risking the loss of precious samples. The Parhelia Spatial Station™ addresses these concerns and enables standardized sample prep through fully automated protocols. Users can choose from many verified assays or create their own with Parhelia’s protocol builder software. Workflows built with the Parhelia Spatial Station™ are highly customizable and cover a range of steps, including but not limited to heating and cooling, mixing, aliquoting, and incubating. While this instrument is fully automated, it also features quality control measures to protect samples and ensure accurate reagent handling. Overall, the Parhelia Spatial Station™ enables more consistent, reliable sample preparation, helping researchers protect precious samples and trust the results they yield.

Indica Labs HALO® Image Analysis Platform

HALO® Image Analysis Platform from Indica Labs will also be available to investigators for quantitative image analysis. This platform offers a variety of user-friendly built-in analysis modules for measuring how cell populations are organized and interact, making it a great choice for researchers with a limited spatial analysis background. Notably, with the HALO® Spatial Analysis Module, researchers can investigate cell proximity and relative spatial distribution across the entire tissue. Users can also tailor HALO® to their specific research needs, as it is compatible with a range of imaging platforms and secondary image management systems. In combination with platforms such as CosMx® SMI and Orion™, HALO® has proven to be an invaluable resource, advancing translational research by streamlining spatial analysis.

Biorepository for Enabling Collaborative Networks (BEACON) COMING SOON

The Biorepository for Enabling Collaborative Networks (BEACON) is a unique translational bridge that complements the institute’s clinical, translational, and comparative medicine expertise to provide an accelerated path to therapeutic discovery and translation to humans. Despite decades of research, therapeutic resistance and disease recurrence rates, including pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and colon cancer, are persistent challenges that contribute to the devastating prognosis for patients.  Matched primary and metastatic samples have been limited to rapid autopsy samples at many institutions, which fail to consider the most important biological variable we have never studied in HUMANS with pancreatic cancer: Time.  It is only through ongoing partnerships with our clinical collaborators that we have direct access to biospecimens collected from longitudinal clinical trials.  These precious and unique tissues will be used to establish BEACON.  BEACON will enable UGA researchers to access biospecimens to define the functional changes of the patient’s own tumor microenvironment in the fourth dimension of time.  This approach will ultimately lead to the identification of strategies to improve therapeutic outcomes and establish disease-free survival and cure for patients.

Precision Imaging and Microscopy Shared Resource (PRISM) COMING SOON

The Precision Imaging and Microscopy Shared Resource (PRISM) will house and manage the Nikon Center of Excellence (Nikon CoE).  Forming an infrastructure for an advanced microscopy facility for all researchers, UGA’s partnership with Nikon is built around shared goals that strive to advance microscopy capabilities and institutional research excellence by leveraging transformational biomedical research and education.  Nikon maintains a network across the Americas that includes over 25 Nikon Imaging Centers, Centers of Excellence, Strategic, and Development that span academic, clinical, and translational institutions, including NCI-designated Cancer Centers and groups with significant biopharma connections. UGA’s partnership with Nikon will foster interdisciplinary translational research, innovation, and education by integrating into Nikon’s worldwide partnership network that will serve as a powerful connection for collaboration and discovery.  Established over twenty years ago, the Nikon Center partnership has proudly built a global network that sets the benchmark for impactful microscopy collaboration, leading to paradigm-shifting biomedical research. Through the establishment of the CoE, UGA’s partnership with Nikon will drive the institution’s innovation and elevate translational research to preeminence.  UGA will ultimately become one of the national leaders in microscopy, with state-of-the-art imaging facilities established as a partnership between Nikon and key research network partner institutes around the world.