IMAXT (Imaging and Molecular Annotation of Xenografts and Tumours) is a Cancer Research UK-funded international initiative that applies cutting-edge spatial-omics technologies — including virtual reality tumour visualisation — to build three-dimensional molecular maps of tumours. CamCEAD provides the large-scale data processing and pipeline infrastructure, applying astronomical computing expertise directly to cancer research.
Cancer Research UK · Cancer Grand Challenges · Funded 2017
5 countries
Funded 2017 by CRUK
Breast cancer focus
What is IMAXT?
IMAXT is a spatial multi-omics platform developed to create detailed three-dimensional maps of tumours while preserving the spatial context of cell interactions and the tumour microenvironment. Led by Professor Greg Hannon at the CRUK Cambridge Institute, the team brought together specialists in biology, mathematics, bioinformatics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and neuroscience across 8 institutions in the UK, Switzerland, USA, Canada and Ireland.
The core ambition was to build an integrated platform combining advanced imaging with single-cell technologies — simultaneously measuring DNA, RNA and protein expression while retaining the spatial relationships between cells. The culmination of this work is the ability to build interactive 3D tumour maps, visualised using virtual reality software (Project Theia) that allows researchers to immerse themselves inside a tumour.
"Building a tumour in virtual reality allows us to see information about behaviour, location and characteristics of tumour cells simultaneously."
— Professor Greg Hannon, Team Lead, CRUK Cambridge Institute
CamCEAD's role
CamCEAD provides the large-scale data processing and pipeline infrastructure for IMAXT, applying expertise in automated image analysis, distributed computing and AI developed for astronomical survey science. The same techniques used to process billions of stellar observations from facilities like Gaia, WEAVE and VISTA are directly transferable to the challenge of managing terabytes of high-resolution tumour imaging data — demonstrating how astronomical data science has direct applications to cancer research and personalised medicine.
Technologies
Imaging platforms
- STPT — Serial two-photon tomography, applied to tumours at high-throughput scale for the first time
- 3D IMC — Three-dimensional Imaging Mass Cytometry
- HiFi — Hyperplexed Fluorescence Imaging
Molecular profiling
- Ex-Seq — Expansion in-situ sequencing
- MERFISH — Multiplexed error-robust fluorescence in situ hybridisation
- DLP+ — Whole-genome single-cell sequencing
- WILD-Seq — Single-cell clonal barcoding
Project Theia — VR visualisation
Groundbreaking virtual reality software that processes single-cell spatial datasets containing millions of cells in real time, enabling multiple researchers to simultaneously explore and analyse 3D tumour models across geographic locations.
Key achievements
Tumour microenvironment
Demonstrated that tumour neighbourhood structure correlates strongly with patient outcomes in breast cancer, and identified specific tumour microenvironment motifs with significant prognostic potential.
Drug resistance
Revealed drug-driven inversion of fitness landscapes in cancer cells using DLP+, providing new insight into how cancer evolves under treatment pressure.
Platform democratisation
The IMAXT platform and data infrastructure are now being made available to the wider research community through SPACE — the Spatial Profiling and Annotation Centre of Excellence, established at the University of Cambridge in 2024.
Source: Cancer Grand Challenges — IMAXT
