Looking beyond the baseline: new frontiers in lung and immune safety

In ImmuBYTES Session 3, “Looking Beyond Baseline Deviations for Lung and Immune Safety,” Prof. Victoria Hutter (CSO & Co-founder) highlighted how subtle changes in macrophage morphology can uncover early immune and lung effects. Moving beyond baseline data, this approach enables faster, more predictive decisions in preclinical safety.

Key highlights include:

1. Why macrophages are Important in lung & immune safety

The session began by revisiting the vital role of alveolar macrophages as frontline defenders in the lungs. Their responses to inhaled compounds offer early and sensitive readouts of immune activation and safety risks – often well before tissue damage is visible.

2. High-Content Imaging in action – morph_ONE

This segment introduced morph_ONE, a multiparametric high-content imaging analysis tool developed to track subtle morphological shifts in macrophages. By quantifying cell shape, structure, and complexity, morph_ONE helps detect functional deviations from baseline that traditional methods may miss.

3. Rat vs. Human: baseline characteristics of macrophages

A critical step in translational science is understanding species-specific differences. This session compared rat and human macrophage baselines, revealing how divergence in cell morphology and behavior impacts predictivity—and why it’s essential to define “normal” with context.

4. Beyond the Baseline – categorising morphology changes

This is where the session delivered its core message. Prof. Hutter demonstrated how morphology-based categorization of macrophage changes offers a deeper, mechanistic understanding of immune responses. By going beyond the presence of change and asking what kind, we gain insight into the nature of immune activation—whether it’s adaptive, adverse, or neutral.

Below is a snippet of the session: