Our Science

Metabolic activity drives medical decisions every day. All around us this metabolic change is important for glucose monitoring, oxygen consumption, lactate production etc and is monitored and imaged using equipment such as fluorometry, respirometry, spectrophotometry, PET scans and Contrast CT.  We also know that a hallmark of cancer cells is their ability to reprogram metabolism to support uncontrolled cell growth and proliferation.  We have known this since the 1920s, when Otto Warburg observed that cancer cells rely on glycolysis for energy production, a phenomenon later known as the "Warburg effect."

Why hasn’t metabolic change driven tissue-based cancer diagnosis? PET scans detect metabolic activity, and malignancy is closely tied to it. Yet, technology hasn’t allowed cellular-level analysis—until now. Traditional diagnostics take up to five days, requiring biopsies to be dehydrated, embedded, sliced, and examined under a microscope. This static view limits metabolic assessment and overlooks tissue heterogeneity. Since a full biopsy review would require 500 slides per patient—impractical in pathology—diagnoses rely on limited samples, increasing the risk of missing malignant cells. What if we could map metabolism across the entire tissue block?

At CellTivity Scientific, we provide an important first look at the freshly excised biopsy. Similar to a wet read, but more like a tissue-based PET scan of that sample. Using Dynamic Cell Imaging^TM (DCI) we are able to provide a point of care assessment of metabolic at the cellular level. This groundbreaking approach to visualizing tissue empowers the Proceduralist to have better collaboration with pathology and oncology. All clinicians can now assess their own patients’ biopsies in real time with a high degree of accuracy in any setting.