"Beyond the limit of histochemistry"

Poster of 14th ICHC at the entrance of Kyoto International Conference Hall.

14th International Congress of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry (ICHC) came and went and I am taking a few moments to reflect. It was my third ICHC (previous two were in Kyoto in 1996 and in Gdansk in 2008) and it is my impression that this one was probably the best in terms of both organization and attendance. Most importantly, due to recent breakthrough developments in microscopy instrumentation, the Congress was fortunate to have a common topic/theme that united many of its presentations and became a Congress key, which was super resolution. For those not very familiar, super resolution microscopes operate above the diffraction limit of light and allow to see structures at the resolution of 10 nm (compared to 220-250 nm in conventional (including confocal) fluorescence microscopes), which is nothing short of revolutionary.

   Congress started with a keynote lecture delivered by Dr. Lippincott-Schwartz from NIH. She talked about new optical probes, imaging strategies, and technical innovations. Although Congress attendees were certainly familiar that Dr. Lippincott-Schwartz is a pioneer of super resolution microscopy and more or less knew what to expect from the lecture, it was my feeling that many of them were blown away by the dynamics of the imagery she had shown and the presentation logic of her talk. I personally was impressed the most by the extent of integration of various disciplines in her studies. Researchers talk about the need for interdisciplinary approach in contemporary medico-biological science for quite some time now. But we don't see too many examples. In this case, everything was there in full bloom.

   Speaking about our workshop on quantitative methods in histochemistry and cytochemistry, we had more attendees that I expected and all three presentations went really well. We also had very lively discussions. Both Dr. Wollscheid  and Dr. Seitz are experienced and dedicated presenters and they tried to pack in their talks as much information as possible. I was glad to speak about quantification of spatial correlation of fluorescent markers mostly based on our recently published Nature Protocols paper. All three talks of us covered different areas of quantification techniques and that was the very idea of the workshop.

The next ICHC Congress will take place in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2016. I wonder what will become a key topic there?