This article was taken from the February 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
This is a live lymph node fibroblast, a cell that plays a key role in our immune system, seen in real-time. The cell was visualised by the 3D Cell Explorer, a new type of microscope developed by Swiss startup Nanolive, which allows researchers and medical doctors to peer inside living cells at high-resolution and in 3D. "Due to the limitations of light, it was impossible to look inside a living cell without damaging it," says Sebastien Equis, Nanolive's cofounder. According to Equis, traditional microscopy techniques are too cumbersome. "[And our] technology enables users to look inside cells without damaging them."
The 3D Cell Explorer was originally developed by Nanolive's CEO Yann Cote at the physics department at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. "Yann was studying how to go beyond the resolution limit of optical imaging," says Equis. "It was purely academic, but one of the reviewers sugegsted that the technology should also be used in cells."
The microscope uses a laser that rotates around the sample, while a camera captures images from different angles. Those images are then processed and output as a 3D animation, allowing researchers to observe the cell's reaction to drugs and other chemicals. In June 2014, the 3D Cell Explorer was used at the Laboratory of Lymphatics and Cancer Bioengineering in Lausanne, to study the interaction between cancer, immune and other cells.
Nanolive plans to release a commercial version of the 3D Cell Explorer in 2015.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
