Recursion Pharmaceuticals Ditches Cell Painting for Brightfield Imaging
Recursion Pharmaceuticals, a biotech leveraging machine learning for drug discovery, recently announced a surprising shift: abandoning its signature cell painting technique in favor of traditional brightfield imaging. This article delves into the reasons behind this change. Advances in deep learning allow models to effectively process raw images, diminishing the value of cell painting's fluorescent dyes for contrast enhancement. Brightfield imaging offers advantages in cost, ease of implementation, and compatibility with live-cell time-lapse microscopy, opening up possibilities for studying cellular dynamics. Despite the seemingly risky move, internal testing at Recursion shows brightfield imaging yielding comparable or even superior results in predicting drug perturbations.