Mount Sinai scientists create AI-powered tool to improve cancer tissue analysis
MARQO delivers faster, fully integrated whole-slide image processing across multiple staining technologies
2025-08-25
(Press-News.org) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Diego Ortiz Quintero
Mount Sinai Press Office
201-572-5703
Diego.ortizquintero@mountsinai.org
Mount Sinai Scientists Create AI-Powered Tool
to Improve Cancer Tissue Analysis
MARQO delivers faster, fully integrated whole-slide image processing across multiple staining technologies
NEW YORK, (August 25, 2025) – Scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed a powerful new computational tool that could transform how cancer tissues are analyzed and help pave the way for more personalized treatments. The study, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, introduces MARQO, a next-generation image analysis process that extracts detailed cellular and spatial information from tumor tissue slides with unprecedented accuracy and scalability.
Developed by a team led by Sacha Gnjatic, PhD, Professor of Immunology and Immunotherapy at the Icahn School of Medicine, MARQO streamlines the complex task of analyzing immunohistochemistry (IHC) and immunofluorescence (IF) images, which are produced via staining methods commonly used to detect immune cells and other biomarkers in cancerous tissues.
When someone has cancer, pathologists inspect stained tissue sections under the microscope to see which cells are present and how they are arranged. Doing this by hand is labor‑intensive and usually limited to small areas of the sample.
MARQO tackles this challenge in three key ways: First, while other tools can process entire images, they often require users to chop slides into patches or rely on costly computing clusters. MARQO keeps slides intact and finishes the job in minutes rather than hours, even on standard graphics processing units. Second, MARQO works with a range of common IHC and IF staining technologies, making study‑to‑study comparisons easier and boosting reproducibility. Third, MARQO automatically flags likely positive cells and assigns coordinates and marker intensities, then hands off the final validation to the pathologist, keeping human expertise at the center of the workflow.
“We designed MARQO to fill a major gap in the field: turning complex whole‑slide images into usable, structured data quickly and consistently,” said Dr. Gnjatic. “By automating the heavy lifting, we let experts focus on interpretation and discovery.”
While MARQO is currently designed for research use and has not been validated for clinical diagnostics, its compatibility with standard clinical staining methods could enable future applications in pathology labs.
The research team plans to continue developing MARQO by improving its user interface, adding advanced spatial and neighborhood analysis tools, and expanding its use in high-performance computing environments to support large-scale projects involving millions of digitized tissue slides.
“This platform could accelerate biomarker discovery, improve how we predict which patients will benefit from specific treatments, and ultimately support the development of more precise cancer diagnostics,” said Dr. Gnjatic.
Co-authors include Mark Buckup (now an MD/PhD student at University of California San Diego); Edgar Gonzalez-Kozlova, PhD, Assistant Professor of Immunology and Immunotherapy in the Gnjatic Lab; Igor Figueiredo, Computer Engineer; Pauline Hamon, PhD (now junior faculty in France); and Giorgio Ioannou, Senior Research Assistant and lead on the mIHC imaging platform.
Funding provided by the National Cancer Institute (U24, P01, and U01 grants), with seed funding from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
###
About the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is internationally renowned for its outstanding research, educational, and clinical care programs. It is the sole academic partner for the seven member hospitals* of the Mount Sinai Health System, one of the largest academic health systems in the United States, providing care to New York City’s large and diverse patient population.
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai offers highly competitive MD, PhD, MD-PhD, and master’s degree programs, with enrollment of more than 1,200 students. It has the largest graduate medical education program in the country, with more than 2,600 clinical residents and fellows training throughout the Health System. Its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences offers 13 degree-granting programs, conducts innovative basic and translational research, and trains more than 560 postdoctoral research fellows.
Ranked 11th nationwide in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is among the 99th percentile in research dollars per investigator according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. More than 4,500 scientists, educators, and clinicians work within and across dozens of academic departments and multidisciplinary institutes with an emphasis on translational research and therapeutics. Through Mount Sinai Innovation Partners (MSIP), the Health System facilitates the real-world application and commercialization of medical breakthroughs made at Mount Sinai.
-------------------------------------------------------
* Mount Sinai Health System member hospitals: The Mount Sinai Hospital; Mount Sinai Brooklyn; Mount Sinai Morningside; Mount Sinai Queens; Mount Sinai South Nassau; Mount Sinai West; and New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai.
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2025-08-25
Key takeaways
UCLA research shows that mitochondria detect invading pathogen Toxoplasma gondii and ramp up competition for vitamin B9, also known as folate, depriving it of the nourishment it needs to grow.
This new discovery came about when a researcher noticed that the amount of mitochondrial DNA in a mitochondrion increased during an infection.
The new discovery raises the possibility that a vitamin regimen could rewire mitochondrial metabolism to make it even more effective at preventing infections, such as toxoplasmosis, in people.
You’ve heard that mitochondria are the “powerhouse of the cell.” Now get ready for “mitochondria are the infantry of the ...
2025-08-25
Inflammatory bowel disease, in which the immune system attacks the gut, is a painful chronic condition that affects three million Americans. Rates of IBD are rising, and there’s currently no cure. IBD can also be deadly: up to 8% of people with the disease develop blood clots, which can lead to heart attack and stroke.
New research has uncovered why blood clotting malfunctions in IBD—and identified drugs that normalize blood clotting in human cells and animal models of IBD.
“We think we can leverage these findings to reduce inflammation and the risk of blood clots,” says Aaron Petrey, PhD, assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at University ...
2025-08-25
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Research into Blue Zones — regions of the world where people tend to live longer — shows that having a sense of purpose in life may help people live longer.
Now, new research from UC Davis shows that having a sense of purpose in life may have another benefit as people age: reducing the risk of dementia.
The new study, published in The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, followed over 13,000 adults aged 45 and older for up to 15 years.
Researchers found that people who reported a higher sense of purpose in life were about 28% less likely to develop cognitive impairment — including mild ...
2025-08-25
While previous research shows outrage and division drive engagement on social media, a new study of digital behaviour during the 2024 US election finds that this effect flips during a major crisis – when “ingroup solidarity” becomes the engine of online virality.
Psychologists say the findings show positive emotions such as unity can cut through the hostility on social media, but it takes a shock to the system that threatens a community.
In a little over a week during the summer of 2024, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally (July 13) and Joe Biden’s suspension of his re-election campaign (21 July) completely reshaped the ...
2025-08-25
The dawn of agriculture in the Neolithic was a major development in the evolution of modern human culture. Although scientists agree that farming developed independently several times around the world, including in Africa, the Americas, and eastern Asia, the origins of many key crops, such as wheat, barley, and legumes have been traced to the Fertile Crescent and the harvesting of wild grains by a people known as the Natufians, roughly 10,000 years ago.
Now, a new study by an interdisciplinary research team shows that, by at least 9,200 years ago, people as far north and east as southern Uzbekistan were harvesting wild barley ...
2025-08-25
Flamingos reveal their secret to ageing
Is ageing inevitable? While most living beings age, some do so more slowly than others. A new scientific study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) addresses a fascinating question: what if migration influences the way we age?
To explore this mystery, scientists turned their attention to the pink flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus), a graceful migratory bird that is emblematic of the Camargue region of France. Birds that do not all age in the same way Thanks to a flamingo tagging and tracking ...
2025-08-25
As people age, they display a bias in recognizing emotions as positive—to the point of improperly labeling neutral or negative emotions as positive. Some researchers theorize this bias is an adaptive mechanism to support mental and emotional wellness, but new evidence suggests it may be a sign of cognitive decline. In a new JNeurosci paper, Noham Wolpe, from Tel Aviv University, and colleagues, from the University of Cambridge, advance understanding on what this positive emotion bias that elders exhibit signifies about their brains’ health.
A large pool of participants (665) viewed faces in an emotion recognition task. Age-related ...
2025-08-25
People tend to be self-preoccupied. Self-interest is good when it ensures that one’s needs are met, but it can also be maladaptive; research shows that the tendency to self-focus promotes the occurrence of depression and anxiety and can even prolong these conditions. Is there a neural representation of self-preoccupation? Danika Geisler and Meghan Meyer, from Colombia University, explored this question in their new JNeurosci paper.
The researchers first identified a pattern of neural activity that frequently ...
2025-08-25
MAUI, HI - AUGUST 25, 2025 — The highest-resolution images of a solar flare captured at the H-alpha wavelength (656.28 nm) ever captured may reshape how we understand the Sun’s magnetic architecture—and improve space weather forecasting. Using the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, built and operated by the NSF National Solar Observatory (NSO), astronomers captured dark coronal loop strands with unprecedented clarity during the decay phase of an X1.3-class flare on August 8, 2024, at 20:12 ...
2025-08-25
A cardiac device trial published in eClinicalMedicine shows that improving enrollment of females in such trials can better guide care for all patients.
The BIO-LIBRA study investigated how well implantable cardiac defibrillators work for patients with non-ischemic cardiomyopathy, a weakening of heart muscle that is more common in females. Because nearly 48 percent of study participants were assigned female at birth—a number that is unheard-of in cardiac device trials—the one-year interim study results revealed that participants assigned male at birth were twice as likely to die or experience ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Mount Sinai scientists create AI-powered tool to improve cancer tissue analysis
MARQO delivers faster, fully integrated whole-slide image processing across multiple staining technologies
