National Geographic Magazine Showcases NanoString’s Spatial Biology Technology to Examine Cell Death in Alzheimer’s Disease

NanoString Technologies, Inc. (OTC: NSTGQ), a leading provider of life science tools for discovery and translational research, today announced that research using the company’s CosMx Spatial Molecular Imager (SMI) has been featured for a third time in National Geographic Magazine.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240327487526/en/

Senescent cells, or zombie cells, dwell in regions crucial for memory, such as the hippocampus, says Miranda Orr, who researches brain aging at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and her team. These cells are damaged but they linger, hurting healthy cells and causing inflammation. Orr's team is studying whether drugs can kill zombie cells and restore memory. The close-up image below shows the effects of Alzheimer's disease. Yellow shows tau tangles, the snarls of tau proteins that degenerative brain diseases create. Blue marks molecules that indicate stress, magenta is a sign of damage beyond repair, and green shows inflammation. When blue, magenta, and green all appear in a cell, especially a large cell, that's evidence it is a zombie cell. (Graphic: NanoString)

A special-interest magazine from National Geographic called Anti-Inflammation, available on newsstands this week, spotlights the role of inflammation on health and disease. The article, “How to Slow Down the March of Time,” features research on senescent “zombie” cells from the lab of Dr. Miranda Orr, associate professor of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and a research scientist at the W.G. Hefner VA Medical Center in Salisbury, NC.

“Our work focuses on understanding how and why the risk of neurodegenerative diseases increases with advanced age. We discovered that senescent cells, which accumulate with aging, contribute to brain diseases including Alzheimer’s. In clinical trials, we are examining potential therapeutic interventions that clear these toxic cells in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The visualizations and data achieved with the CosMx SMI instrument provide unprecedented subcellular information across brain regions impacted by Alzheimer’s disease. The technology allows us to characterize these cells and search for new therapeutic targets to clear them, a vital aspect of our progress,” said Dr. Orr.