BIH researcher invited to participate in the Nobel Symposium " Spatial Biology in The Genomics Era " from June 10-11, 2024 in Stockholm, Sweden

Since 1965, the Nobel Foundation has organized internationally renowned symposia dedicated exclusively to topics that represent significant scientific achievements and breakthroughs. 

The 195th Nobel Symposium took place on June 10 and 11, 2024 in Stockholm and was entitled "Spatial Biology In The Genomics Era". The focus was on presenting groundbreaking developments and latest findings in spatial omics to characterize tissues and organs for cell-based basic and translational research. 

This year, Dr. Naveed Ishaque, group leader at the BIH Center of Digital Health, was one of the select few invited to this prestigious event to present and discuss his research findings among the most distinguished scientists in the field such as George Church, Fabian Theis and Sarah Teichmann. 

The symposium emphasized the need to move from non-spatial single-cell methods to spatial profiling methods to better understand how cellular communication determines function in the context of tissues and niches and how this extends to organ-level function.

The benefits of spatial information were highlighted in several presentations, including that of Prof. Sten Linnarsson, who showed that spatial context made it possible to correct the previously misclassified subclass of messenchymal glioblastoma tumors, which actually originated from a spatially separated region of the tumor. Given the numerous demonstrations of the benefits of spatial profiling, it begs the question of where the field is heading - there has been a lot of talk here about 3D, multi-omics, multi-organisms and the advancement of AI to understand the massive data generated by these technologies.