ABSTRACT
Recent years have brought tremendous progress in ex situ tissue optical clearing (TOC) and light sheet fluorescence microscopy. Although first developed mainly by neuroscientists, TOC has already been applied to almost every rodent organ and its use has now spread to other fields such as organoid, human, and even plant tissue imaging. TOC emerges as an important tool in both basic and clinical cancer research, allowing the study of tumor microenvironment in an almost intact 3D form and the analysis of absolute numbers and distribution patterns of metastases. Due to the development of whole-body clearing, such information is now available in the context of the entire rodent organism. In this chapter, the major challenges and proposed solutions for application of TOC will first be highlighted from a biologist’s perspective; second, the progress and application of this methodology in basic immunology and immuno-oncology will be covered.
