Institute which i'm working in is interested of going in one of these directions so I’m planning to investigate both of them. I’m really looking to find out what you’d think to be the more efficient field to go for pathology institute. Cost and time are limiting factors.
MALDi-imaging is far to be a standardized approach. There is a significant noise coming out and you may have not correct localization of the species due to the diffusion from the original spot. Moreover this technology is limited to protein identification. Next generation sequencing is applicable only to nuclear species (DNA/RNA/microRNA) and you do not have the information where they were expressed . In my opinion the best approach is a spectral microscope platform (here we use VECTRA) in which you can image in multiplexing protein/DNA/RNA/microRNA. If you want to have examples of this approach you may read our last papers using this approach.
Hope it helps.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0114750
http://www.plosone.org/article/metrics/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0101065
http://www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget/index.php?journal=oncotarget&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=2049
Thank you for answer.
We do use a spectral microscope platform too, in fact several of them. We thinking about MALDI Imaging mass spectrometry or next-generation sequencingin as additional approach.
Interesting link:
http://www.nature.com/labinvest/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/labinvest2014156a.pdf
As I wrote to you the two technologies are designed for two different purposes and are complementary. In the MALDI case, though, the technology is at the early step and it is not given that will develop and maintain the expectations. Still many variables needs to be adjusted prior you can use with confidence. In the NGS case, the technology is robust, but you will never know where what you are looking is expressed and if the expression occurs in all the tissue or in a subset of cells. At least here, you do not have to buy an NGS platform, but simply you have to prepare the samples and send out to a sequencing facility. The tricky step then is the analysis which require specific knowledge which are not commonly found in standard pathology labs. So if you have to invest resources, the investment for NGS is more in human capital (and a good software) than in hardware.
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