Bioinformatics Seminar
Time: 11AM
Venue: Davis Auditorium and Teams
12 July 2022
Exploring terminal duct lobular unit with spatial transcriptomics
Andy Yunshun ChenWEHI Bioinformatics / Cancer and Stem Cells
Terminal duct lobular units (TDLUs), also referred to as lobules, are epithelial structures within the breast. Most breast cancers arise in the TDLU, but little is known about the difference in transcriptomic profile between aberrant and normal TDLUs. With the new spatial transcriptomics technology, we are able to obtain expression profiles for individual lobule by incorporating the extra layers of spatial information and imaging information. This allows us to gain further insights into the diversity within the mammary gland and to perform differential analyses at the level of TDLU. In this talk, I will present a collaborative project that aims to optimise methodology to investigate spatial and molecular heterogeneity amongst lobules in breast tissue. To do that, we adopted the latest 10X Visium spatial transcriptomics platform to profile fresh frozen tissue samples collected from multiple patients under different conditions. Through spatial information, we can look at the diversity and architecture of lobules in these conditions and then apply this to address many other questions.