Ashlee VanceNYT Best Seller | Reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek

Making Cheaper Cancer Drugs #science #biotech #cancer #medicine #biology

6 Apr 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:02

In this segment, the presenter demonstrates a workflow that integrates traditional histology staining with a fully automated robotic slide stainer. Unstained thin tumor biopsy sections are loaded onto the robot, which dispenses specialized dyes and reagents over a 3–12 hour automated staining cycle. After staining, the slides are scanned using a high‑throughput digital scanner that adds multiple color channels to delineate distinct tumor regions. The combined system enables researchers to visualize drug distribution within the tumor, identify which cells are affected, and monitor tumor shrinkage in real time, thereby accelerating cancer drug development.

Chapters

So this is an unstained slide of a very thin section of a patient tumor biopsy. Okay. Now in its current state, this is a white piece of tissue, doesn't really reveal much. But what we are trying to do is really combine this 300-year-old technology with our fully automated robotic slide stainer. And what, it just puts like a dye? Yeah, it is dispensing dyes and special reagents onto these slides. And these dyes are designed to identify some key biological components in the tumor. Okay. And the staining process can It can take 3 to 12 hours, but this is all automated, so one can just load the slides and walk away and really come back to high-quality data. Once the slides are all stained, we bring them here, and this is our really high-throughput digital scanner. We've added different kinds of colors to identify different regions in the tumor, and when we apply this to drug development, we can really see where our drug is going in the tumor, which cells it is affecting, and if the tumor is shrinking in real time.