Multiplexed in Situ Protein Imaging Using DNA-barcoded Antibodies with Extended Hybridization Chain Reactions

Antibodies have long served as vital tools in biological and clinical laboratories for the specific detection of proteins. Conventional methods employ fluorophore or horseradish peroxidase-conjugated antibodies to detect signals. More recently, DNA-conjugated antibodies have emerged as a promising technology, capitalizing on the programmability and amplification capabilities of DNA to enable highly multiplexed and ultrasensitive protein detection. However, the nonspecific binding of DNA-conjugated antibodies has impeded the widespread adoption of this approach. Here, we present a novel DNA-conjugated antibody staining protocol that addresses these challenges and demonstrates superior performance in suppressing nonspecific signals compared to previously published protocols. We further extend the utility of DNA-conjugated antibodies for signal-amplified in situ protein imaging through the hybridization chain reaction (HCR) and design a novel HCR DNA pair to expand the HCR hairpin pool from the previously published 5 pairs to 13, allowing for flexible hairpin selection and higher multiplexing. Finally, we demonstrate highly multiplexed in situ protein imaging using these techniques in both cultured cells and tissue sections.