TOMOCUBE

13/08/2026

A drug that blocks iron export already helps β-thalassemia patients' anemia — but what does it do to their bones?

That question mattered because similar iron-pathway drugs have made bone loss worse, not better. Testing VIT-2763 directly in a mouse model, researchers found the opposite: it left bone-building cells alone but slowed the bone-resorbing ones.

Label-free helped show how — live imaging revealed two key resorption proteins suppressed inside osteoclasts, and under iron-overload conditions, cell density rose even though shape stayed the same, a physical signature linked to the drug's protective effect.

Read the study: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41420-026-03273-x

11/08/2026

TomoAnalysis™ Viewer is built for one thing: exploring the advantages of data.

An intuitive UI makes viewing live, label-free cells in 2D, 3D, and time-lapse effortless. You're productive from the first click, no training session needed.

🔹 2D: step through the cell slice by slice to explore subcellular detail.
🔹 3D: rotate the refractive-index tomogram to see the whole cell in volume.
🔹 Time-lapse: watch the same cell change over time.

Same cell, three views, one click each. That's the whole learning curve.

Ready to try it?
1️⃣ Download TomoAnalysis™ Viewer and activate with your contact information — free, no purchase required.
2️⃣ No data of your own yet? Open File → Load Sample Data Path to explore two included HT datasets.

https://tomocube.com/products/tomoanalysis_viewer

10/08/2026

The hidden world of protists — label-free, in 3D. 🦠

Protists are a perfect showcase for label-free live imaging: wildly diverse in size and shape, and best appreciated alive and in motion. From free-moving amoebas to intricate filamentous algae, our video captures them in their native state, no stains, no labels, imaged with the Tomocube HT-X1 Plus.

The HT-X1 Plus lets you choose your optimal light source — red, green, or blue — to match the sample. For these chloroplast-rich protists we used the green 520 nm source: chlorophyll barely absorbs green light, so structural contrast stays crisp and the intracellular detail comes through.

🔬 About the HT-X1 Plus: https://tomocube.com/products/htx1_plus
▶️ Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT8lUHGg_Z8

07/08/2026

Cancer cells have a favorite trick for dodging the immune system: burning glucose the inefficient way and flooding nearby tissue with lactate, which shuts down T cells and NK cells before they can act.

A new therapy turns that trick against them — extracellular vesicles from early-pregnancy stem cells, engineered to carry the enzymes cancer cells are missing. Delivered to colorectal and liver cancer cells, the vesicles force pyruvate back into the mitochondria and trigger apoptosis, while normal cells recover unharmed. In mice, systemic dosing shrank tumors with no toxicity.

Label-free holotomography caught the moment of death live, tracking cells over 24 hours as they visibly shrank and rounded up right on the apoptosis timeline.

Read the study: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranon.2026.102938

04/08/2026

𝗧𝗼𝗺𝗼𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀™ 𝗩𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿 is now open to everyone. 🎉🎉

Explore data and see label-free images of live cells down to subcellular detail, simply by downloading our latest software version.

And since it comes with a 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗲𝘁, you can start exploring right away. No imaging system or data of your own required.

What you can do from minute one:

🔹 Observe cells in 2D, 3D, and time-lapse.
🔹 Overlay fluorescence (FL) for molecular context.
🔹 Compare conditions side by side.
🔹 Get a quick read with on-screen measurement.
🔹 Handle large datasets with ease.

Find out more:

Tomocube offers AI-powered, label-free 3D imaging of live cells, tissues, and organoids with the HT-X1 Holotomography series. Unlock new possibilities in your research.

31/07/2026

When researchers modeled a heart attack in the lab, one type of heart tissue held its ground — and it wasn't the muscle.

A University of Surrey team built two versions of 𝟯𝗗 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁-𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗼𝗶𝗱𝘀: one with just cardiac cells, one with an added epicardial layer. After simulated oxygen deprivation, the epicardium-free tissue lost a significant chunk of its protein content. The epicardial version didn’t show the same decline, despite comparable cell death in both models.

Holotomography's label-free readout captured this loss directly, revealing subtle declines in structural integrity and viability that conventional approaches often miss.

Read the preprint: https://lnkd.in/g6GRHKGQ

16/07/2026

Restoring blood flow after a stroke is supposed to save the brain. Sometimes it triggers a second wave of damage instead.

Researchers at Mahidol University found that blocking a single ion channel, SUR1-TRPM4, with an existing diabetes drug curbed astrocyte swelling and cooled the inflammatory response that follows — using Tomocube's label-free holotomography to watch living cells swell and recover in real time, without dyes or fixation.

The results were striking: glibenclamide restored cell volume toward normal, cut oxidative stress by roughly a third, reduced the reactive marker GFAP by about 38%, and lifted cell viability from 84% to nearly 93%.

Read the study: doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0352151

Astrocytes play essential roles in maintaining brain homeostasis but undergo pathological alterations following ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury. Astrocyte swelling and reactive changes are associated with secondary injury processes, including cerebral edema and neuroinflammatory responses. In vitr...

09/07/2026

Day 2 at — thanks for a great Day 1 at Booth #701! 🙌

Our poster on label-free holotomography (HT) for human-derived cancer organoids is up today.

📌 Poster T1056 · 9 July · 5:15–6:30 PM

One non-destructive HT scan → a full quantitative profile, from segmentation to drug response, all in 3D — no dyes, no fixation, organoid stays viable for continued culture.

📌 Booth #701 · open all day

07/07/2026

Plastic doesn't need years to affect your immune cells — 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗿 is enough.

Polish and UK researchers exposed human immune cells (PBMCs) to 25-nanometer polystyrene nanoplastics and used label-free to catch the earliest response: cells shrank, got denser, and packed their remaining mass more tightly — all within 60 minutes.

Run alongside metabolic and single-cell transcriptomic assays at the same timepoint, that structural view added a stain-free, live-cell readout of what the particles were doing to each cell.

Read the study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147651326006524?via%3Dihub

06/07/2026

Virtual DAPI for label-free 3D nuclear analysis — inside intact tissue, no staining, no antibodies.

Holotomography uses refractive index as intrinsic contrast, so nuclei can be imaged and quantified in 3D without any fluorescent label. Here's the workflow, run on gastric cancer tissue:

🔹 Segment & quantify — 3D nuclei were identified through a segmentation pipeline and integrated into TomoAnalysis for downstream quantification. Per-nucleus readouts: dry mass, RI, sphericity, surface area, and volume.

🔹 Cluster — UMAP + K-means on single-nucleus measurements (n = 671).

The result: nuclear heterogeneity mapped across the tissue, in full 3D context, with no marker required.

Label-free 3D nuclear analysis directly within intact tissue — no s...