Collaborative development and dissemination of workflows and techniques for using Correlative Light, Electron and X-ray Microscopy to progress research into the understanding and treatment of diseases

Correlative multimode imaging is the only way to reveal a composite view of a biological sample with the multidimensional information about its macro-, meso- and microscopic structure, dynamics, function and chemical composition that is required in order to understand biomedical processes and diseases.Project CLEXM addresses an urgent need to demonstrate, promote and disseminate the benefits of this technique in the fields of disease and drug therapy research and especially to early-career researchers. The premise of project CLEXM is that there is a growing need for disease and drug therapy researchers to understand the linkages between structural and functional changes that occur in a cell and to be able to observe these from the cellular (micrometre) to the molecular (nanometre) scale. Correlative Light and Electron Microscopy (CLEM) is the current state-of-the-art for achieving this, but the technique is extremely complex and slow. CLEXM postulates that the integration of a third imaging modality, Soft X-ray Tomography (SXT), into CLEM will make it easier and faster for researchers to correlate cellular structure with cellular function. Correlative Light, Electron and X-ray Microscopy (CLEXM) can be combined in a number of ways and the benefits will be demonstrated in a number of different use cases. This would be too difficult and too much to achieve as a single research project or as a single MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship, however, it lends itself to be most easily achieved as a network of complementary individual projects, under an MSCA Doctoral Network action.The overarching objective of project CLEXM is to provide high-level training in the field of correlative multimode imaging to a new generation of doctoral candidates to provide them with the transferrable skills necessary for thriving careers in a high-growth area that will aid researchers in their quest to understand disease and to develop effective therapies.