脂质研究正在引起越来越多的关注，因为这些分子是了解细胞代谢以及基因型和表型之间的联系的关键组成部分。新技术和强大技术的发展也推动了脂质研究，这些技术能够在单次运行中以不断降低的浓度识别出越来越多的物种。其中一项关键进展是图像技术，它能够以细胞分辨率可视化组织上的脂质分布。由于此类技术报告的空间信息，可以将脂质组特征与处于固定代谢阶段的单个细胞相关联，这极大地有助于理解与不同病理状况（例如癌症）相关的代谢变化。此外，脂质图像正在成为一种新的分子组织学，很有可能对医院的诊断部门产生影响。在这里，我们检查了该技术的现状，并分析了将其引入诊断单位的下一步应该采取的措施。为了说明这项技术的潜力和挑战，我们提出了一个关于透明细胞肾细胞癌的案例研究，由于其显着的细胞和分子异质性，这是分析恶性肿瘤的良好模型。版权所有 © 2024。由 Elsevier B.V. 出版。

Lipid research is attracting greater attention, as these molecules are key components to understand cell metabolism and the connection between genotype and phenotype. The study of lipids has also been fueled by the development of new and powerful technologies, able to identify an increasing number of species in a single run and at decreasing concentrations. One of such key developments has been the image techniques that enable the visualization of lipid distribution over a tissue with cell resolution. Thanks to the spatial information reported by such techniques, it is possible to associate a lipidome trait to individual cells, in fixed metabolic stages, which greatly facilitates understanding the metabolic changes associated to diverse pathological conditions, such as cancer. Furthermore, the image of lipids is becoming a kind of new molecular histology that has great chances to make an impact in the diagnostic units of the hospitals. Here, we examine the current state of the technology and analyze what the next steps to bring it into the diagnosis units should be. To illustrate the potential and challenges of this technology, we present a case study on clear cell renal cell carcinoma, a good model for analyzing malignant tumors due to their significant cellular and molecular heterogeneity.Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.