Duke-NUS scientists build new virtual tissue tools to map how cells talk in disease
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 22-Jun-2026 05:15 ET (22-Jun-2026 09:15 GMT/UTC)
New simulator and computational tool generate realistic “virtual tissues” and map cell-to-cell “conversations” from spatial transcriptomics data.
The tools could accelerate AI-driven discoveries in cancer, brain disorders and precision medicine by revealing which genes control how cells interact.
A team led by Prof. Fei Ling from South China University of Technology developed PRTS (Pathology-driven Reconstruction of Transcriptomic States), a deep learning framework that predicts single-cell-resolution spatial transcriptomics directly from H&E-stained histology images.