NEW microscope technology could help experts gain a better understanding of incurable bowel conditions and provide hope to thousands living with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Scientists at the Rosalind Franklin Institute shared that the super-resolution microscopy technique, which operates at 10 times the resolution of conventional light microscopy, may help them to understand the mechanisms of IBD and provide better treatment options for patients.1
Housed at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Oxfordshire, the Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscope works by incorporating a second, doughnut-shaped depletion laser.
The outer ring of this laser actively depletes fluorescence emitted by the first laser beam, while the centre remains unaffected, allowing fluorescent light emitted from the focal point – or the centre of the doughnut – to be detected in extreme detail.
STED microscopy also enables multiplexing, facilitating the visualisation of multiple biomolecules, such as proteins, lipids, or glycans, each labelled with fluorescent tags and represented in different colours, in a single sample.
One of a kind in the UK, the microscope also has additional features such as mirrors that correct the distortion of images and a temperature-controlled stage, enabling living cells and mini-organs to be studied under conditions close to normal body temperature.
These attributes, which offer the option of either real-time, live imaging or stufy of fixed samples into multiple cellular structures and processes, position STED and the team working with it at the forefront of unravelling the complex biological processes that drive IBD and its often debilitating symptoms.
The hope for the team, led by Dr Karina Pombo-Garcia, is that the microscope may be able to help the more than half a million people in the UK who currently live with some form of IBD, with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis being the two main forms.2
Dr Pombo-Garcia told EMJ: “STED gives us something fundamentally new: the ability to see the molecular architecture of the human gut at approximately 20-nanometre resolution, around ten times beyond conventional light microscopy.
“At this scale, we can resolve how individual proteins organise at the junctions between intestinal cells to build and maintain the barrier that protects us from the contents of the gut.”
She explained: “This is particularly important for inflammatory bowel disease. In IBD, the gut barrier becomes damaged and permeable, allowing inflammation to persist, but we still do not understand exactly what changes within its nanoscopic structure.”
“Conventional microscopy shows us that the barrier is disrupted; STED can help reveal precisely how and where it is disrupted,” she added.
“The unique capabilities of this microscope allow us to extend this work beyond thin, fixed laboratory cells and into thicker human samples, including patient-derived intestinal organoids… By comparing healthy and IBD-derived samples, we hope to identify the earliest molecular changes that cause the barrier to fail.”
According to a report published by the British Society of Gastroenterology, 24% of adults in the UK living with IBD found it hard to cope with the disease, one in seven cases of which are reportedly diagnosed through an emergency hospital admission.2
There is currently a lack of targeted treatment for many kinds of IBD, which can often cause debilitating side effects that impact the day to day lives of patients living with the condition. The new microscope offers a new opportunity to help these people.
Dr Pombo-Garcia said: “This matters for treatment because we cannot design truly precise therapies without knowing which molecular process has gone wrong. STED could… identify potential therapeutic targets and eventually allow us to test whether a treatment restores the gut barrier’s normal nanoscale organisation.
“It is not simply a sharper image; it is a new way of making previously invisible human disease biology measurable.”
Science Minister Chris McDonald unveiled the microscope alongside a five-year £67.7 million investment from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council into the Rosalind Franklin Institute to build on its pioneering work in next-generation imaging, engineering, biology and diagnostics.
Dr Pombo-Garcia said about the investment: “In my team we are very excited to be leading this research and technology development with the new settlement of funding. For IBD research, this gives us an unprecedented opportunity to connect what happens at the scale of individual proteins with what ultimately happens in patients.”
The Henry Royce Institute, which focuses on materials research, will also receive a further £90 million over the same period as part of McDonald’s plan to back UK scientific and medical innovation. The money was set out in the core budget of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) in the 2025 spending review.
References
1 The Rosaline Franklin Institute. Stimulated Emission Depletion Microscopy (STED). https://www.rfi.ac.uk/focus/platforms/stimulated-emission-depletion-microscopy-sted/. 2026.
2 British Society of Gastroenterology. LANDMARK REPORT CALLS FOR URGENT INVESTMENT IN BOWEL DISEASE CARE. https://www.bsg.org.uk/news/ibd-uk-report-and-press-release. 2026.
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