This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A book sits atop a table. Although it's closed, its title, "Encyclopedia of Human Tissue," promises untold secrets.
Perhaps with this book, you can learn about different cell types and what they look like under normal conditions or conditions of disease. Maybe you can learn how gene expression differs in the cells of younger and older people, or whether different patients' cells respond differently to the same treatments. But you can't read the book.
It's been locked shut, immobilized by a plexiglass case. Disappointed, you set the inaccessible book back down and put it, along with the hundreds of other books sitting next to it, out of your mind ... ... until new technology opens those books wide. This is what's happening in the realm of cell biology.
A new method pioneered by the lab of Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology Ken Lau is poised to make previously inaccessible medical knowledge locked away in old patient samples newly accessible to scientists. For more than a century, human tissue around the world has been preserved in formalin (also known as formaldehyde) and embedded in paraffin wax, allowing scientists and clinicians to examine tissues by thinly slicing, staining and observing them under a microscope. However, some newer sequencing technologies have so far been difficult to use with these formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded samples.
Lau's new method changes that. Single-cell RNA sequencing is one such technology. scRNA-seq has transformed scientists' understanding of tissue heterogeneity, demonstrating that cells within a single tissue express different kinds and levels of RNA—the intermediary between DNA's genetic instructions and its protein products. Archives of FFPE samples seem perfect for harvesting biological information using newer techniques, but, according to Lau lab graduate student James Evans, molecular information can be damaged during preservation, making it challenging to recover and analyze.
Previous research has succeeded in isolating cell nuclei from FFPE samples, but much information is lost—particularly RNA—when the rest of the cell is discarded. Lau and colleagues, in a paper led by Evans and co-first author Joey Simmons—a senior research specialist in the Lau lab—have built on a method that Simmons created to isolate and recover more high-quality, intact cells for further study. Their paper was published in Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology in August 2026.
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