Next-Generation Disease Profiling by Integrating Histopathology with Spatial Multi-Omics Data

Abstract

The field of pathology has experienced several transformative changes in recent years with the advent of digital pathology and spatial multi-omics. These technologies have enhanced every aspect of pathology practice, from streamlining daily workflows to generating high-fidelity multi-omics data that provide pathologists with novel tools to refine disease profiling and clinical diagnosis. Each layer of multimodal data (genomic, metabolomic, proteomic, or transcriptomic) has uncovered a distinct facet of disease pathologies, and combined with machine learning/artificial intelligence–based data analysis and pattern recognition models, has provided holistic understanding of regulatory mechanisms underpinning them. However, high-dimensional data have far exceeded the volume, scale, and complexity of immunostaining methods implemented by pathologists and, thus, have generated significant challenges related to deconvolution, interpretation, and clinical translation. Furthermore, these multimodal studies have predominantly relied on computational methods to process data and extract disease-relevant insights, thus raising questions around relevance or role of a pathologist in this new era of multi-omics. This review will provide a perspective on the evolving fields of molecular histopathology and spatial -omics, leveraging them to approach disease profiling, and redefining the role of a pathologist during this process.