AstroPath
A new interdisciplinary platform, called AstroPath, makes use of sky-mapping algorithms with advanced immunofluorescence imaging of cancer biopsies. Researchers at The Mark Foundation Center for Advanced Genomics and Imaging from the Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science (IDIES) at Johns Hopkins University, and the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy have developed a robust platform to guide specific immunotherapeutic regimens by predicting which cancers are most likely respond to treatment.
Cancers may express molecules or recruit cells that can potentiate and/or interfere with an immune response against the tumor. Most of these molecules have been studied as single factors. What is needed now is a way to understand how these factors act in concert during tumor development and progression, as well as how they change when a patient is receiving treatment.
Our Team
Director, Division of Dermatopathology Professor of Dermatology
Dr. Taube is a pathologist, and she is one of the two PIs for AstroPath. She has developed and validated an approach for pinpointing ~40 immunoactive molecules across large areas of tumor tissue specimens. These maps are imaged using the AstroPath platform and linked through the database to other available data on the specimens and patients, including DNA and RNA-based studies, radiologic images, and clinical data such as treatments received and patient outcomes.
Bloomberg Distinguished Professor Director of IDIES
Dr. Szalay is the other PI of the team and is an astrophysicist who led the effort to build a large, open-access, spatially-resolved data portal for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Based upon the lessons learned over 25 years working on the SDSS SkyServer, Dr. Szalay has architected a data-management and analysis environment to process, host and visualize the large-scale tumor-immune maps that are being generated by Dr. Taube’s laboratory. Analyses of the detailed spatial features over hundreds of millions of cells in the tumor microenvironment enable the discovery of rare phenomena at a high statistical significance.
Taube Lab Members
Liz Engle, MS
Benjamin Green
Haiying Xu
Aleksandra Ogurtsova
Sigfredo Soto-Diaz
Julie Stein, MD
Cottrell Lab
Tricia Cottrell, MD, PhD
Astronomy/Data Science
Alex Szalay, PhD
Richard Wilton, MD
Margaret Eminizer, PhD
Jeffrey Roskes, PhD
Dmitry Medvedev
Joshua Doyle, MD
AI/ML Collaborators
Alan Yuille, PhD
Seyoun Park, PhD
Yixiao Zhang
BKI Collaborators
Drew Pardoll, MD, PhD
Robert Anders MD, PhD
Suzanne Topalian, MD
Evan Lipson, MD
Luda Danilova, PhD
Leslie Cope, PhD
AstroPath Alumni
Nicholas Giraldo, MD, PhD
Peter Nguyen, MS
Charles Roberts, MS
Jose Loyola
Sahil Hamal
Akoya Collaborators
Cliff Hoyt, MS
Sneha Berry, PhD
Daphne Wang, MS
TME Core
AstroPath assay development and associated slide scanning technologies are now available through the Johns Hopkins Tumor Microenvironment (TME) Core, managed by Liz Engle (eengle6@jhmi.edu).
AstroPath is a collaboration between
Sponsored Research Funding Agencies
Industry Supporters
AstroPath is proud to be selected as a winner of the Falling Walls award for Life Sciences! #ScienceReuintesUs
Falling Walls is an international science platform that asks, “Which are the next walls to fall in science and society?” The organization sponsors an annual conference in Berlin each November.
The Falling Walls international prize jury recognized AstroPath for its unique contribution to global cancer research. AstroPath was selected as one of ten winners for 2021. The official award announcement will be made on Wednesday, September 15, 2021.
AstroPath in the News
Select Publications
Reaching for the stars: combining astronomy and pathology to map cancer biomarkers
Taube & Szalay (2021). Immuno-Oncology Insights, 2(5), 247-256.
September 27, 2021
Mapping cancer as if it were the universe
The Economist, April 24, 2021
Multiplex computational pathology for treatment response prediction
Cancer Cell, August 9, 2021
Presentations
AstroPath: Astronomy Meets Pathology to Characterize the Tumor MicroEnvironment
Alex Szalay – PDF file
Correcting for Systematics in Multiplex Cancer Imaging in the AstroPath Project
Margaret Eminizer – PDF file
