Exploring excellence in published images

By Katrina Kelly

April 16, 2021

Today we’re taking a look at what makes a fantastic published image, and giving you the chance to sign up for a free webinar for suppliers all about how we collect our published images data and how you can use this data to help your customers. 

We first launched our published images data on CiteAb back in August 2019, and since that time our team has been busy growing our collection of images and making it the very best available. 

Being able to see experimental imagery straight from the scientific literature helps researchers and suppliers better visualise how products have been used in the past.

For researchers, this means they can use this information alongside product citations to really assess how a product might work in their laboratory. For suppliers, published images drive sales – they can be uploaded to a suppliers own website to help better promote products by more thoroughly showing how they’ve been successfully used in the past.

CiteAb product manager Alicia Cooper said: “Good quality published images can make a big difference to researchers and suppliers. Many suppliers don’t realise that they can use published images on their websites, so I am going to run a free webinar especially for suppliers later this month, on 28 April 2021, to take a deeper look at how you can use published images in your marketing and sales, and answer any questions you may have about how we collect our published images data. You can sign up for the webinar here.” 

In recognition of the importance of good quality published images, we included a category in our CiteAb Awards this year recognising the best of the best. The winner of our ‘Image of the Year’ category was Flavia Millesi and the Radtke lab at the Medical University of Vienna. 

This highly attractive image was published in FASEB Journal in November 2020, in a paper titled ‘Defining the regenerative effects of native spider silk fibres on primary Schwann cells, sensory neurons, and nerve-associated fibroblasts’.

The paper focuses on the use of spider silk in the search for a suitable material to promote regeneration after long-distance peripheral nerve defects. Nerve conduits enriched with native spider silk fibres as internal guiding structures previously demonstrated a regenerative outcome similar to autologous nerve grafts in animal studies. The reasons behind the success of spider silk are still uncertain, which is why Flavia Millesi and team investigated the effect of spider silk on Schwann cells, the crucial cells in peripheral nerve regeneration.

The team’s winning image demonstrates that Schwann cells not only accept spider silk as a natural adhesive, but that they also proliferate on the fibres (EdU+ cells in red). Moreover, the cells aligned to the fibres reminiscent of bands of Büngner, a structure Schwann cells align to in order to guide re-growing axons. In further experiments, the researchers showed that silk also facilitates the migratory capacity of Schwann cells. The study established read-outs for a refined and detailed behavioural analysis of primary Schwann cells (as well as nerve-associated rFBs and rDRG neurons) cultured on native dragline silk, which will assist future studies of biomaterials.

Alicia adds: “The products used in this study by Millesi and colleagues were supplied by Thermo Fisher Scientific and Agilent Technologies who supplied the products used in this research. This award really shed a light not only on the fantastic research and published image from the researchers, but also on the way in which published images can help researchers see how a suppliers’ products have worked in previous studies. Congratulations to Flavia Millesi and the Radtke lab and to Thermo Fisher Scientific and Agilent Technologies.” 

To join the free webinar on 28 April 2021 at 4pm BST please sign up here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_mHfguRXxS0ODCp_zPpojrg 

If you are unable to join the webinar but would like more information about our published images data then please don’t hesitate to contact Alicia who would be happy to answer any questions you might have.