RNAscope™ & GeoMx DSP joint workflow presented at AACR 2020

The canonical WNT-β-catenin signaling pathway is vital for development and tissue homeostasis but becomes strongly tumorigenic when dysregulated. This pathway can alter the transcriptional signature of a cell to promote malignant transformation, growth and metastasis. However, thorough characterization of these transcriptomic signatures has been challenging because traditional methods lack either spatial information, multiplexing, or sensitivity/specificity. To overcome these challenges, we developed a novel workflow combining the single molecule and single cell visualization capabilities of the RNAscope in situ hybridization (ISH) assay with the highly multiplexed spatial profiling capabilities of the GeoMx® Digital Spatial Profiler (DSP) RNA assays. Using these methods, we sought to spatially profile and compare gene expression signatures of tumor niches with high and low CTNNB1 expression.