Aragorn was pleased to attend the European Society of Spatial Biology conference Spatial Biology: The Melting Pot, in October. This opportunity was funded by the UK Institute for Technical Skills Strategy - Technology Specialists Network: Research Technical Professional Opportunities, Knowledge and Skills International Conference Fund.

The conference was an interesting mix of methodology focused talks and sessions centred around using spatial biology techniques to probe certain diseases, such as cancer and the tumour microenvironment. These sessions helped to highlight how these cutting-edge techniques can help to shed light on differential response to immunotherapy in cancer or different disease progression in Alzheimer's.

Aragorn presented a poster of HDBR and its experimental services, including SpaRTAN (our spatial transcriptomics service), and gained interest from a wide variety of attendees. Some of the highlights included the panel discussion on opportunities and challenges in the field of spatial biology, a talk on the use of non-destructive imaging mass spectrometry in combination with immunofluorescence-based proteomics, and a talk highlighting the similarities between axolotl regeneration and organoids.

Aragorn will be giving talks on what he learnt to the lab, the SpaRTAN group, and at Special Interest Groups (the university's groups for exchanging knowledge on specific topics) including Spatial Transcriptomic, Multiplexed Imaging and Analysis, Bioinformatics, Image Analysis, and Histology and Pathology.