Images of cultured cells, organoids, glia and neurons in brain slices and in the brains of mice.
Shigenori Inagaki, Nao Nakagawa-Tamagawa, Nathan Zechen Huynh, Yuki Kambe, Rei Yagasaki, Satoshi Manita, Satoshi Fujimoto, Takahiro Noda, Misato Mori, Aki Teranishi, Hikari Takeshima, Koki Ishikawa, Yuki Naitou, Tatsushi Yokoyama, Masayuki Sakamoto, Katsuhiko Hayashi, Kazuo Kitamura, Yoshiaki Tagawa, Satoru Okuda, Tatsuo K Sato, Takeshi Imai (2026) Isotonic and minimally invasive optical clearing media for live cell imaging ex vivo and in vivo., Nature methods
Published in March 12, 2026 (Electronic publication in March 12, 2026, midnight )
(Abstract) Tissue clearing has been widely used for fluorescence imaging of fixed tissues, but its application to live tissues has been limited by toxicity. Here we develop minimally invasive optical clearing media for fluorescence imaging of live mammalian tissues. Light scattering is minimized by adding spherical polymers with low osmolarity to the extracellular medium. A clearing medium containing bovine serum albumin (SeeDB-Live) is compatible with live cells, enabling structural and functional imaging of live tissues, such as spheroids, organoids, acute brain slices and the mouse brains in vivo. SeeDB-Live minimally affects neuronal electrophysiological properties and sensory responses in vivo, and facilitates fluorescence imaging of deep cortical layers in live animals without detectable toxicity to neurons or behavior. We further demonstrate its utility to epifluorescence voltage imaging in acute brain slices and in vivo preparations. Thus, SeeDB-Live expands both the depth and modality range of fluorescence imaging in live mammalian tissues.