Scientists can now draw 'satellite maps' of thousands of proteins inside a single slice of tissue

A drug entering the brain does not spread evenly — and until now, nobody could see exactly where it went. A University at Buffalo team led by Jun Qu has built hex-MASP, a technology that divides a tissue slice into tiny hexagonal wells and maps more than 6,000 proteins across it, like satellite photos of a landscape. In a mouse brain, it tracked both a therapeutic antibody and the tissue's own proteins at once. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the method has already pointed to promising new Alzheimer's drug targets — and could help researchers drop weak drug candidates before costly trials begin.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation