For the 2026 edition of the CNRS “Visites Insolites”, four France-BioImaging member research institutes and imaging facilities will open their doors to the general public. The Institut Fresnel, IBDM, the IMAG’IC facility at Institut Cochin, and theImagoSeine facility at Institut Jacques Monod will welcome visitors in October for a series of hands-on activities and demonstrations exploring imaging, light and the hidden world of living systems. Find out more about each event below.
Please note: registration for all four events closes on 20 September 2026.
Institut Fresnel: Photonics is fantastic!
Hervé Rigneault’s MOSAIC R&D team, together with the Photonics facility, will introduce visitors to the fascinating possibilities of manipulating light to reveal what cannot be seen with the naked eye, through interactive experiments and demonstrations.
Institut Jacques Monod: Take a closer look at your plate with flow cytometry
The flow cytometry unit of the ImagoSeine facility will invite visitors to discover the hidden world of living organisms found in our food. Participants will also have the opportunity to visit the facility and discover some of its imaging equipment.
At IBDM, the visit will focus on developmental biology and the earliest stages of life. Through hands-on activities and observations using a stereomicroscope, visitors will explore this otherwise invisible world and discover how scientists study the first steps of development.
Institut Cochin: Biomedical research – a journey into the heart of cells
The IMAG’IC imaging facility will welcome visitors for an exploration deep inside cells using fluorescence imaging. Participants will also be able to build their own mini optical microscope, the Foldscope, which can be used with a smartphone.
And there’s more to come! The following weekend, several laboratories and imaging facilities will also open their doors for the Fête de la Science. Check what is happening near you and take the opportunity to discover even more behind-the-scenes science!
Ana Svetić is a PhD student in Nanotechnology at the University of Trieste (Italy). Her research focuses on developing a cell-derived plasma membrane model for correlative nanoscale imaging, with the aim of observing membrane nanodomains.
During a research stay abroad as part of her PhD, she visited theCBS AFM facility in Montpellier, where she used the PALM-AFM set-up to correlate AFM scanning with TIRF microscopy and investigate phase separation and nanodomains.
Through France-BioImaging User Access Support, Ana was able to acquire specific AFM tips that improved the quality of her scans and helped her obtain significant results. She also highlights the simplicity and efficiency of the access process and encourages other researchers to apply for support.
Could you introduce yourself?
Hi, my name is Ana Svetić, and I’m a biotechnologist turned biophysicist. I’m currently in the process of finishing my PhD in Nanotechnology at the University of Trieste and Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste. My laboratory is called Nanoinnovation, and we do lots of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) as a supporting lab to the synchrotron.
What is your research project about?
My research project focuses on developing a cell-derived plasma membrane model, namely Giant Plasma Membrane Vesicles (GPMVs) and their patches (GPMV patches) for correlative nanoscale imaging – imaging with AFM and correlative techniques such as epifluorescence and TIRF microscopy, to ultimately observe the membrane nanodomains.
These nanodomains are, as the name suggests, nano-sized. In cells, they are just a few nanometers, very small and transient, and there hasn’t been a technique so far that allows the visualization and formation of said domains. But these ordered domains have been observed in synthetic models, namely Supported Lipid Bilayers (SLBs) and Giant Unilamellar Vesicles (GUVs).
So, my goal is to pass from more common simple synthetic membrane models (SLB and/or GUV) to a more complex one (GPMVs), in hopes to have a better, more biologically relevant model for observation of phase separation, which is responsible for the creation of previously mentioned nanodomains.
Which France-BioImaging’s facility did you visit, and which imaging technology did you use?
I was a visiting PhD student at the Centre de Biologie Structurale (CBS) – CNRS facility in Montpellier, where I’ve used the PALM-AFM set-up as a part of my PhD period abroad.
The PALM-AFM allowed me to correlate AFM scanning with TIRF (Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence), or more specifically, have the ability to measure the fluorescence intensity of the undermost layer of the GUV patches and GPMV patchesat the same time as performing an AFM scan of the same region of interest.
This ultimately allowed me to observe the phase separation and nanodomains in two ways – by seeing (TIRF) and by scanning (AFM) the surface of the membrane models.
Could you walk us through your experience accessing France-BioImaging?
I was made aware of the France-BioImaging opportunity by my mentor, Luca Costa PhD. He kindly told me about the platform, how to apply, and so I did. It was quite easy to fill out the form, and it took little-to-no-time to receive a positive reply!
I was astounded at the efficiency of the FBI and how smooth it all went, to be honest.
How did this access contribute to advancing your project?
I was already using the set-up before applying for the funding, but the funding helped me to buy and obtain AFM tips that I needed for my measurements. AFM tips that I needed were hard to get by, so I’m quite grateful for the funding of France-BioImaging. This in turn helped me get AFM scans of better quality, and at the end of the day obtain significant results for my research.
Thanks to TIRF, we were able to confirm different types of phase separations, which in turn shows up in nanodomain patterns.
AFM-TIRF image of a 20 mol% cholesterol GUV patch, same ROI. The correlative imaging demonstrates the existence of 2 phases. TIRF (left), AFM (right).
What are the next steps for your research project?
As I’ve already mentioned, I’m currently wrapping up my PhD project. Afterwards, I’m not sure, but I would like to explore more of what I’ve developed so far, and eventually localize meaningful proteins inside GPMVs and GPMV patches. This would let us know where exactly in nanodomains are proteins such as, for example, HER-2! It would be really, really cool.
What advice would you give to researchers who are considering applying for the FBI User Access Support?
Do it! Any support is meaningful and sometimes just a little bit can change the course of your research.
The CNRS technical networks RTmfm and FEMTO are organizing two thematic days dedicated to “Nonlinear microscopy: the latest advances in multiphoton microscopy”, on December 10–11, 2026, at the Bordeaux Imaging Center in Bordeaux.
The event will highlight the latest technological developments in nonlinear microscopy, including advances in laser technologies, aimed at simplifying these approaches, improving their performance and making them more accessible to users.
This event has received support from the Euro-BioImaging Sponsorship Programme!
The In Vivo Imaging Unit of the PFIC at Gustave Roussy together with the Revvity team invite you to a half-day session dedicated to in vivo imaging instruments and their preclinical applications.
The event will take place on October 2, 2026, from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM and will focus on photonic imaging and micro-computed tomography.
The programme will include:
A presentation of in vivo imaging applications
Practical demonstrations on IVIS and Quantum GX3 imaging systems
Planning to attend? To help tailor the presentations and demonstrations to participants’ projects and areas of interest, please complete and return the dedicated form available below, before September 25, 2026.
IMACS is a European postdoctoral programme in biological and medical imaging, led by the Marseille Imaging Institute.
The programme aims to support 17 experienced researchers, recruited by Aix-Marseille University and the University of Tübingen, for a period of 36 months.
Several laboratories that are members of the France-BioImaging Marseille Node are among the host organizations on the Aix-Marseille University side, including:
CIML
Fresnel Institute
IBDM
This programme is a unique opportunity to work in an environment of excellence offering:
high-level research
access to state-of-the-art facilities
personalized and group training
career guidance and support
international mobility
individual exposure to intersectorality
Interested? Applications are now open until November 30, 2026!
Find more information about the eligibility criteria, selection process, host teams and more via the link below.
The France-BioImaging Working Group “Multiplexed Imaging”, in collaboration with the “Cellular Identities and Destinies” exploratory research programme (PEPR Cell-ID), is organizing a workshop from November 30 to December 1, 2026, at Genopolys in Montpellier.
This event will focus on the latest advances, challenges and opportunities in spatial and single-cell biology. It is open to researchers, students and engineers interested in spatial imaging and single-cell multi-omics.
Several speakers have already been invited, including France-BioImaging members:
Florian Mueller – Institut Pasteur, Paris
Marcelo Nollmann – Center for Structural Biology, Montpellier
Perrine Paul-Gilloteaux – University of Nantes
Thomas Walter – Institut Curie/Mines, Paris
The full programme will be published soon!
Interested in attending? Register now via the link below. The deadline is September 30!
Meryem Aloulou is an INSERM researcher at the Toulouse Institute for Infectious and Inflammatory Diseases (INFINITy), where she leads a research programme investigating how regulatory T cells orchestrate T–B cell cooperation. She is currently exploring how the nuclear architecture of T cells contributes to the regulation of their identity.
To visualize this architecture, she needed access to an imaging technique that was not available in her laboratory. Through France-BioImaging User Access Support, she was able to visit the IBENS imaging facilityand collaborate with Samira Benadda to move her research project forward.
We had the pleasure of meeting Meryem, who shared her journey with us and presented the results she obtained thanks to this visit.
Could you introduce yourself?
I am originally from Agadir, a coastal city in southern Morocco, where my curiosity about the living world began long before I knew it had a name. What fascinated me from the start, and still does, is the paradox at the heart of immunity: the same system must defend us against pathogens without ever turning against our own tissues. That question brought me to France, where I studied immunology and completed my PhD in Immunology at Université Paris Diderot.
During my PhD, carried out in Professor Renato Monteiro’s laboratory, I investigated Fc receptors and uncovered unexpected mechanisms regulating antibody-mediated immune responses. Our work challenged the traditional view of these receptors as purely activating molecules, revealing that the very same receptors can either amplify or restrain immune responses depending on the biological context. This work highlighted the remarkable adaptability of the immune system and its ability to fine-tune inflammation.
After completing my PhD, I joined the Centre de Physiopathologie de Toulouse Purpan (CPTP) in Toulouse in the laboratory of Dr. Nicolas Fazilleau. There, I turned to the regulation of humoral immunity, where our work revealed an unexpected heterogeneity within follicular regulatory T (Tfr) cells, reshaping our understanding of their role in regulating germinal center responses.
To further broaden my expertise, I spent two years as a visiting researcher in Professor Adrian Liston’s laboratory at the University of Cambridge. I was fascinated by the way Adrian had built his laboratory around a truly interdisciplinary vision, bringing together immunologists, molecular biologists, computational biologists, mathematicians, clinicians… to tackle fundamental questions of immune regulation. Working in this environment transformed the way I approach scientific research and convinced me that the most exciting biological discoveries emerge at the interface of multiple disciplines.
Today, I am an INSERM scientist at the Toulouse Institute for Infectious and Inflammatory Diseases (INFINITy), where I have established an independent research program investigating how regulatory T cells orchestrate T–B cell cooperation in health and disease. My goal is twofold: to uncover the mechanisms that govern protective immunity, and to identify biomarkers that improve immune monitoring in vaccination, autoimmune disease, and cancer. To achieve this, I combine fundamental immunology with emerging technologies and translational research.
What is your research project about?
The nucleus is much more than a container for DNA. It is closer to a library: the way the books are arranged on the shelves determines which ones can be read. And in immune cells, we have barely started to look at the shelves
Regulatory T cells are essential for maintaining immune homeostasis. Far from being mere suppressors, they actively orchestrate interactions among T cells, B cells, and dendritic cells to ensure that effective immune responses develop while preventing excessive inflammation and autoimmunity.
Although decades of research have identified the molecular and epigenetic programs controlling regulatory T cells, we still know remarkably little about how the three-dimensional organization of the nucleus contributes to establishing and maintaining their identity.
The spatial organization of chromatin determines which genes are accessible, how they are expressed, and ultimately how a cell acquires its function. Yet this level of regulation remains largely unexplored in regulatory T cells.
To investigate this, we use two complementary populations as experimental models: CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ regulatory T cells. Our previous work revealed important molecular differences between them, leading us to hypothesize that they may also possess distinct nuclear architectures.
Ultimately, we aim to determine whether nuclear architecture represents an additional layer of immune-cell organization that shapes immune-cell function.
You received financial support to access a France-BioImaging facility. Which facility did you visit, and which imaging technology did you use?
I first heard about France-BioImaging through our imaging facility, and the User Access call arrived exactly when our project needed a technology we did not have in Toulouse.
Through the France-BioImaging User Access program, I obtained access to the imaging facility at the Institut de Biologie de l’École Normale Supérieure (IBENS) in Paris.
The project is carried out in close collaboration with Dr. Samira Bennada, Head of the IBENS Imaging Facility, whose expertise in expansion microscopy and quantitative imaging has been instrumental in shaping both experimental design and imaging strategy.
Expansion microscopy relies on a counterintuitive idea: rather than relying solely on a more powerful microscope, the biological specimen itself is physically enlarged. The sample is embedded in a swellable polymer, where molecular labels are anchored before controlled expansion physically separates them while preserving their relative organization.
In our protocol, the sample is physically expanded before imaging, increasing the effective imaging resolution and allowing quantitative visualization of nuclear structures that were previously below the diffraction limit (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Expansion microscopy enhances the visualization of nuclear organization in primary regulatory T cells. DAPI-stained CD4⁺ regulatory T-cell nucleus before expansion (left) and after expansion (middle and right), imaged using a 63× objective. Physical expansion increases the effective imaging resolution from approximately 250 nm to ~30 nm, allowing subnuclear structures that cannot be resolved by conventional fluorescence microscopy to become distinguishable. Right: maximum-intensity projection. Scale bars, 5 µm.
Our project combines expansion microscopy with two complementary imaging modalities: the NSPARC detector for high-resolution confocal imaging of chromatin-associated markers and nuclear compartments, and spinning-disk SoRa microscopy for rapid three-dimensional super-resolution imaging.
Together, these approaches provide a multiscale quantitative imaging pipeline adapted to investigating the nuclear architecture of rare primary regulatory T cells.
Why was this technology relevant or essential for your research project?
Current molecular and genomic approaches have transformed our understanding of regulatory T-cell biology by identifying the genes, transcription factors, and epigenetic programs that define these cells. However, they provide little information about how these molecular components are spatially organized within the nucleus.
Yet, the three-dimensional organization of chromatin is increasingly recognized as a fundamental regulator of gene expression. To understand how regulatory T cells acquire and maintain their identity, we need to investigate not only which molecular players are present, but also how they are arranged in space.
Expansion microscopy is uniquely suited to address this challenge because it enables nanoscale imaging while preserving the native spatial organization of the cell. By physically expanding the specimen, it allows us to visualize and quantitatively analyze subnuclear structures that would otherwise remain below the diffraction limit.
Combined with high-resolution quantitative imaging, this approach allows us to map the spatial organization of chromatin, nuclear compartments, and lineage-defining transcription factors directly in primary regulatory T cells.
Rather than replacing transcriptomic or epigenomic approaches, expansion microscopy complements them by adding a spatial dimension that sequencing alone cannot provide. Ultimately, this integrated strategy will allow us to determine whether distinct nuclear architectures contribute to regulatory T-cell specialization, stability, and function.
Could you walk us through your experience accessing France-BioImaging?
The collaboration started long before the first images were acquired. Together with Samira, we discussed the biological hypothesis, selected the most appropriate nuclear markers, optimized sample preparation, and designed the imaging workflow best suited to answer our biological question.
I still remember seeing the first successfully expanded regulatory T-cell nucleus appear on the screen. It was not yet a biological discovery, but it was the first tangible demonstration that a question we had previously been unable to address had become experimentally accessible. For the first time, we could begin to explore the internal nuclear landscape of these rare primary immune cells at a scale that had previously been beyond our reach.
For me, this illustrates one of the greatest strengths of France-BioImaging. It is not simply a network providing access to sophisticated microscopes: it is a network of scientists who help transform an ambitious biological question into a robust imaging strategy.
As an immunologist, working closely with imaging experts has been extremely enriching. This interdisciplinary dialogue has broadened the way I think about my research and opened new perspectives at the interface between immunology, quantitative imaging, and spatial biology.
How did this access contribute to advancing your project? Which results did you obtain?
The project is still ongoing, but the impact of France-BioImaging is already tangible.
Beyond providing access to technologies unavailable at our institute, the collaboration has enabled us to establish a robust multiscale imaging pipelinespecifically adapted to primary regulatory T cells. Together with the IBENS team, we optimized sample preparation, expansion protocols, image acquisition, and quantitative image analysis.
We are nowgenerating the first datasets that will allow us to quantitatively compare the nuclear organization of different regulatory T-cell populations.
Most importantly, this access has transformed what was initially a conceptual hypothesis into a biologically testable question, and has established a technological framework that will support many future projects in our laboratory.
What are the next steps or future perspectives for your research project?
Our immediate objective is to determine whether distinct nuclear architectures are associated with different regulatory T-cell states. Beyond describing nuclear organization, we aim to identify structural features that distinguish specialized Treg populations.
A particularly exciting question is whether nuclear architecture merely reflects cellular state or actively contributes to maintaining the regulatory lineage. We hypothesize that specific features of three-dimensional genome organization provide a structural framework supporting the transcriptional and epigenetic networks underlying Treg stability.
To address this, we will generate multidimensional spatial maps of the Treg nucleus by combining chromatin organization with the spatial distribution of lineage-defining transcription factors and histone modifications. Integrating this nuclear spatial imaging approach with transcriptomic, DNA methylation, and functional analyses will reveal how nuclear organization contributes to Treg stability and function.
More broadly, we envision nuclear architecture as a new dimension of immune-cell characterization, complementing molecular biomarkers and providing innovative ways to assess Treg stability.
Ultimately, this work demonstrates how advanced imaging can bridge structural cell biology and immunology by bringing spatial biology to the nuclear level, opening new perspectives for precision immunology.
What advice would you give to researchers who are considering applying for the France-BioImaging User Access Support?
I would strongly encourage researchers to apply. France-BioImaging offers much more than outstanding imaging technologies: it gives you access to an exceptional community of imaging scientists, and it fosters genuine scientific collaborations.
My advice: start with a clear biological question, not with a specific technology. The facility scientists are true scientific partners who can help refine the experimental design, identify the most appropriate imaging approaches, and develop robust quantitative workflows.
For me, the greatest strength of France-BioImaging is precisely this combination of technological excellence, scientific expertise, and collaborative spirit. It enables researchers to tackle ambitious biological questions that would be difficult to address within a single laboratory.
If I had the opportunity to apply again, I would do it without hesitation.
Like Meryem, you can benefit from France-BioImaging User Access Support to access cutting-edge imaging technologies available across the infrastructure!
The Institut Pasteur (France-BioImaging Paris Centre Node) is organizing a seminar in collaboration with Exciting Instruments on September 21, 2026, in Paris. This event will be dedicated to single-molecule fluorescence methods and how they can complement structural biology and biophysics workflows.
Structural biology methods such as cryo-EM and X-ray crystallography provide powerful snapshots of biomolecular systems. This seminar will explore how smFRET and FCS can add a dynamic layer by revealing conformational changes, biomolecular interactions and heterogeneous populations directly in solution.
On the program
1:30 – 1:45 PM Welcome and Introduction – Dr. Patrick England & Dr. Audrey Salles
1:45 – 2:30 PM See your favorite biomolecules in action – Easy-to-use single-molecule fluorescence tools to observe biomolecular dynamics and interactions – Dr. Roman Renger (Exciting Instruments, Sheffield, United-Kingdom)
2:30 – 3:00 PM Peptides at the membrane interface: quantifying binding, understanding translocation – Dr. Alexandre Chenal (Institut Pasteur, Paris, France)
3:00 – 3:30 PM Coffee Break and discussions
3:30 – 4:00 PM Fantastic biomolecules and how to find them – Dr. Steven Quinn (University of York, United-Kingdom)
4:00 – 4:30 PM Q&A and closing remarks
4:30 – 6:00 PM One to one discussions between Exciting instrument scientists and researchers interested in testing single-molecule fluorescence on their biological system
As we have a limited number of seats, we encourage you to secure your place by registering below.
The France VolumeEM network is organizing its first Scientific Days in Bordeaux (Broca Center – Bordeaux University) on September 28 and 29, 2026.
The aim of this event is to bring together the community around 3D electron microscopy approaches and complementary techniques, such as TomoX, in the fields of life sciences and materials science.
A bonus session will take place on the afternoon of September 29 and will be dedicated to workshops on CryoFIB-SEM, SBF-SEM, array tomography, plasma FIB, cryogenic and room-temperature sample preparation, as well as various image analysis software tools. Places are limited!
Interested in sharing your work? You can submit an abstract to present your research during one of the three thematic sessions!
Abstracts can be submitted via the Sciencesconf website, either during registration or at a later stage, or by email. Please find the submission guidelines here.
If you do not wish to give an oral presentation but would still like to share your work, you can also submit a poster for the Monday evening poster session.
Both oral presentations and posters will be entered into a contest with great prizes to be won!
General information
When: September 28-29, 2026
Where: Broca Center, Bordeaux
The event is free and open to all, but the registration is mandatory.
Developed by Philippe BUN, research engineer at the NEURIMAG imaging facility, part of the France-BioImaging Paris-Centre Node, Fa•Da•Scope is a new software suite designed to support the monitoring and traceability of microscopy set-ups. Initially deployed at NEURIMAG, the tool is now drawing interest from other imaging facilities, including Cyceron in Caen and PRIMACEN in Rouen, both part of the France-BioImaging infrastructure. Discover how Fa•Da•Scope helps bridge the gap between instrument booking and real workstation use.
Shared research facilities often face the same operational gap: a booking tells the facility engineers who was expected to use an instrument, but it rarely documents what happened once the user sat at the workstation. This “last-mile” gap between the calendar and the instrument can create blind spots in traceability, handover and Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) compliance. To address this challenge, Philippe BUN has developed the Facility Data Scope (in short Fa•Da•Scope ••).
Fa•Da•Scope•• is a lightweight software suite designed for shared-instrument environments. For nearly a year, it has been deployed as a software gatekeeper on high-end confocal and widefield systems at the NeurImag imaging facility (IPNP, Inserm, Université Paris Cité). It sits at the workstation between the user and the instrument control software. Before acquisition begins, users interact with a brief, facility-defined interface to manage:
identification and group/project information;
tool and accessory selection;
SOP acknowledgement;
workstation checks and handover comments.
Fa•Da•Scope is not a booking system. It does not replace established platforms or local reservation tools. Instead, it complements them by documenting the exact point of contact where the user, the instrument software, the workstation and the facility rules meet. Fa•Da•Scope is built around three core pillars:
Staff-driven design– Editor module
Facility staff remain in control by configuring system-related questions, tool lists, warnings and mandatory checks through a zero-code interface.
Operational analytics– Insights module with pseudonymizer and spotlight utilities
Dedicated staff toolbox to clean, review and summarize session logs into facility-level indicators. When outputs need to be shared beyond the local staff team, identifiers can be pseudonymized and the resulting metrics transformed into presentation-ready figures.
Privacy-first and lightweight deployment
Fa•Da•Scope is strictly data-blind: it never inspects images, acquisition files or experimental content. Its architecture is designed to remain non-intrusive on high-performance acquisition workstations.
Following routine use at the NeurImag imaging facility and successful testing in one additional shared-facility environment, Fa•Da•Scope is now ready for broader deployment across the research community.
The team is looking to engage with facilities interested in standardizing their workstation metadata, improving instrument stewardship and contributing feedback from different instrument and facility contexts. Demonstrations, installation guidance and support for the initial configuration are provided.
Facilities interested in participating in this broader deployment phase are welcome to contact Philippe BUN at: philippe.bun@inserm.fr
Built around three key pillars – innovation, training and access – France-BioImaging aims to provide the scientific community with access to state-of-the-art microscopy technologies and expertise. To make this possible, innovative developments from R&D teams must be transferred to imaging facilities, where they can become accessible to users.
Since 2021, France-BioImaging has supported this process through dedicated technology transfer calls. Discover the laureates of the 2026 edition and the projects that will help bring new imaging approaches closer to the scientific community.
WEAVE – Web Environment for Annotation, Visualization & Exploration
by Anatole Chessel (LOB, Paris)
FBI facilities produce terabyte-scale 2D, 3D and multi-photon datasets that increasingly outpace local, install-heavy software stacks, (Fiji, QuPath, custom Napari plugins) and are often dependant of the microscope producing company (Zen, LasX, Aivia, Imaris, NIS…). Moving data to a workstation, sharing full-resolution views with collaborators, and overlaying AI-derived annotations on the source pixels remain serious bottlenecks for core facilities and their users.
WEAVE is a browser-based portal that solves these in one stack: zero-install visualization of OME-Zarr, CZI and multi-photon TIFF data at any scale; collaborative ROI annotation with hard-linked statistics; an AI inference layer for routine quantification tasks; and native interoperability with the new FBI.data transfer infrastructure being deployed across the FBI Ile-de-France node.
Built on the Awdacity stack (initiated with INRIA and Pasteur Institute) co-developed with the LOB advanced microscopy team and the MIMA2 facility, WEAVE will be physically implanted at the MORPHOSCOPE imaging facility (École Polytechnique) and the MIMA2 platform (Micalis, INRAE) within 12 months as a service for participating nodes users, ready for adoption across other nodes and integration with FBI.data solutions.
XRM4ALL – X-ray Microscopy for all and beyond
by Nicolas Brouilly (IBDM, Marseille)
The project combines two X-ray Microscopy (XRM) developments at PICsL. First, it will establish an XRM-guided targeting service for FBI and the RIME (Réseau d’Imagerie par Microscopie Electronique) users, enabling non destructive 3D localization of regions of interest in resin blocks before ultramicrotomy. This service will be structured through standardized submission, sample handling, automated reconstruction workflows, and data sharing through OMERO, with immediate deployment followed by progressive optimization.
Second, the project will develop an Expansion Microscopy (ExM) approach for XRM imaging, together with a membrane labelling strategy, to provide volumetric visualization of cellular compartments. To compensate for contrast dilution during expansion, we propose using an ExM-compatible membrane labelling probe conjugated to undecagold for post-expansion silver enhancement.
Altogether, this innovative method will allow increasing the resolution of micro- and nano-XRM imaging modalities for biological samples.
SCALE
by Florian Muller (Institut Pasteur, Paris)
Demand is rising for spatial gene-expression mapping in complex 3D models such as organoids, organ-on-chip, and thick tissue sections. While commercial solutions offer turn-key workflows, they remain costly and are often incompatible with non-standard sample formats or thick tissue. We propose transferring the SCALE workflow to the Pasteur BioImaging (PBI) core facility as a service. SCALE integrates hydrogel-embedded tissue clearing with two detection modalities – multispectral HCR and automated sequential smFISH (AutoFISH) – on existing PBI microscopes.
The project has two objectives: first, utilizing multispectral imaging to visualize 10 genes simultaneously; and second, deploying automated sequential smFISH (AutoFISH) to target >40 genes in the same sample. Building on ongoing R&D projects, this 12-month transfer will establish an affordable, open-access spatial transcriptomics service optimized for 3D biology.
Dark2Light – TRAST microscopy: imaging dark states
by Elisa Bombarda (LBP, Strasbourg)
TRAnsient STate (TRAST) microscopy is an innovative fluorescence approach that probes non – or weakly fluorescent (“dark”) transient states through time-averaged fluorescence detection under modulated excitation. Arising from intersystem crossing, trans-cis isomerization, or photo-induced charge transfer, these dark states typically exhibit long lifetimes, enabling TRAST to access μs-ms dynamics far beyond the ps-ns timescale of fluorescence. TRAST can thus probe cellular microenvironments, rare molecular events and slow processes that remain inaccessible to conventional fluorescence methods.
Combining the high sensitivity of fluorescence detection with the strong environmental responsiveness of long-lived dark states, TRAST is applicable to a broad range of fluorophores, including weak emitters, with promising applications in biology, medicine and nanotechnology. The project will establish the first TRAST setup in France (the second in Europe), providing a unique technology for the scientific community.
The IPAM (Imagerie Préclinique Appliquée de Montpellier) imaging facility, part of the France-BioImaging Montpellier node, is proud to announce the installation of France’s first IVIM Technology intravital microscopy system (IVM-C3), at the Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle (IGF, CNRS, Inserm, University of Montpellier).
Intravital microscopy (IVM) is a cutting-edge imaging technique that enables real-time, cellular-level visualization of biological processes in small animal models (e.g. mice, rats). It provides a direct window into cellular dynamics of soft tissues within their native physiological environment, and longitudinal imaging sessions (from days to months) in which animals are their own control.
This system enables a broad range of preclinical applications, including:
Real-time vascular permeability measurements,
Tracking of cell intravasation and extravasation (tumor cells, immune cells),
Immune cell imaging within native tissue microenvironments,
The IPAM facility warmly acknowledges the financial support by the Région Occitanie (PRIO-FEDER project) and the PEI-Muse program (Université de Montpellier).
The IPAM facility now offers access to this system (CNRS auditable fees), available to the national and international academic community as well as industrial partners.
For inquiries and collaboration requests, contact: ipam@ipam.cnrs.fr.
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