CICECO News » Researchers secure beamtime at Diamond Light Source for BetterBone project

The proposal "Stem Cell Differentiation Probed by SR-Micro Spectroscopy to Tackle Co-Lineaging During Osteogenesis in Biomedical Applications" has been successful in the latest allocation round at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron facility. The evaluation panel’s decision, communicated to applicants this week, awards the team five days of beamtime to carry out synchrotron-based infrared microspectroscopy experiments on differentiating stem cells.

The proposal was submitted in March 2026 by the researcher Mariela Nolasco, who is a Deputy Coordinator of the Computational Spectroscopy Lab at CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials and a member of the BetterBone team, and acts as a Principal Investigator for the experiment. It builds directly on the objectives of BetterBone, a project led by Ana Gil and funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).

The award reflects both the scientific merit of the proposal and the strength of the collaboration underpinning it, and represents a substantial in-kind support from Diamond Light Source, covering the operating cost of synchrotron beamtime, travel and accommodation.

The scientific challenge

Bone regeneration strategies increasingly rely on directing mesenchymal stem cells down the osteogenic lineage. However, differentiation is rarely a clean, one-way process: cells within the same culture can commit to competing fates, a phenomenon known as co-lineaging, with significant consequences for the reproducibility and safety of stem cell-based biomedical applications.

Resolving this heterogeneity requires a technique that is simultaneously label-free, chemically specific, and spatially resolved at the single-cell level - a combination met by synchrotron-radiation infrared microspectroscopy.

The experiment builds on the team’s expertise in Synchrotron Radiation (SR)-micro-Infra-red (IR) spectroscopy and on the technique’s high spatial and spectral resolution to investigate stem cell differentiation, with emphasis on the early stages of osteogenesis and the detection of undesired co-lineaging into adipogenic and chondrogenic pathways. Detailed biochemical information at the subcellular level will allow the identification of early markers that distinguish pure osteogenic differentiation from mixed lineage commitment, particularly within the first days of differentiation.

More information:

Diamond Light Source: https://www.diamond.ac.uk/Home.html

BetterBone Project: https://www.ciceco.ua.pt/?tabela=projectosdetail&menu=208&language=eng&projectid=1868