Column: UMass Medical brings disease study closer to home

Courtesy Chen Xu is a PhD associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and core director of the Massachusetts Facility for High-resolution Electron Cryomicroscopy at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

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By Chen Xu

UMass Medical School is now home to two high-resolution cryo-electron [cryo-EM] microscopes, the first of their kind in New England. An $11 million investment, the new Massachusetts Facility for High-resolution Electron Cryomicroscopy opened its doors in October 2016.

The cutting-edge technology helps scientists understand fundamental biological questions about the causes of diseases, potentially leading to drug development for possible cures.

With major technical advances in electron microscopy and electron detectors, cryo-EM has surpassed other technology as the superior experimental technique for academic institutions and the biotechnology industry to obtain structural information.

Dubbed the “research method of the year” by the journal Nature Methods, it provides atomic-level, structural information for biological systems based on high-resolution electron images.

The technology is named for the sample preservation process; biological samples are typically preserved by rapid freezing and then observed in an electron microscope at liquid nitrogen temperature, called “cryo condition.”

This structural information is critical to understand how and why a biological system functions the way it does.

The ability to see the structure and shape of important molecular structures is important to drug developers. Most drug targets are actually embedded in cellular membranes, which have been difficult or impossible to visualize in great detail.

The cellular machinery in cell division (and thus, cancers), the vast mix of structures that make up the immune system, and processes involved in viral infections, are all targets that can be studied using cryo-EM technology.

For scientists, the cryo-electron microscopy is an increasingly important technique used in structural biology and other disciplines to study the relationships between structure and function in large molecular complexes within cells.

Until now, the cryo-EM facility closest to the New England region was in New York City.

Promoting biotech

Our goal for the new Cryo-EM facility at UMass Medical School is to promote bioscience and biotech research in the region and nationally. Our vision is to build a complete pipeline from sample preparation to high-quality data collection to final computer data analysis. With scientists from other academic institutions and the pharmaceutical industry partnering with UMMS to use the technology, we are also training new users to master basic cryo-EM skills in order to optimize their research productivity.

Chen Xu is a PhD associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and core director of the Massachusetts Facility for High-resolution Electron Cryomicroscopy at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.