Same-Slide Spatial Multi-Omics Integration with IN-DEPTH Reveals Tumor Virus-Linked Spatial Reorganization of the Tumor Microenvironment
Spatial transcriptomics and proteomics have enabled profound insights into tissue organization, yet these technologies remain largely disparate, and emerging same-slide multi-omics approaches are limited in plex, spatial resolution, signal retention, and integrative analytics. We introduce IN-situ DEtailed Phenotyping To High-resolution transcriptomics (IN-DEPTH), a streamlined, resource-efficient, commercially compatible workflow using single-cell spatial proteomics-derived imaging to guide transcriptomic capture on the same slide without RNA signal loss. To integrate modalities beyond niche-level mapping, we developed Spectral Graph Cross-Correlation (SGCC), a proteomic-transcriptomic framework resolving spatially coordinated functional state changes across interacting cell populations. Applied to diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), IN-DEPTH and SGCC enabled stepwise discovery from EBV-positive and EBV-negative tumor comparisons to single-cell resolution, revealing coordinated tumor-macrophage-CD4 T-cell remodeling, immunosuppressive C1Q macrophage enrichment, CD4 T-cell dysfunction, and a candidate IL-27-STAT3 signaling axis. Collectively, IN-DEPTH enables scalable spatial multi-omics to uncover clinically relevant microenvironmental mechanisms and towards robust spatial multi-modal AI models.
Institutions
- Agency for Science, Technology and Research (SG)
- University of Dayton (US)
- Brigham and Women's Hospital (US)
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (US)
- Harvard University (US)
- The University of Queensland (AU)
- Cornell University (US)
- Information and Communication Technology Agency (LK)
- University of Rochester Medical Center (US)
- Japan Science and Technology Agency (JP)
- Mater Research (AU)
- Universitätsklinikum Tübingen (DE)
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (US)
- University Children's Hospital Tübingen (DE)
- Bioinformatics Institute (RU)
- Bioinformatics Institute (SG)
- Institute of Bioinformatics (IN)
- The Ohio State University (US)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Stanford University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Cancer Discovery
- Published
- 2026-03-24
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1158/2159-8290.cd-25-0775
- Primary Topic
- Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00