Kanpur, 7 May 2026: Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur), led by Associate Professor Prof. Hamim Zafar, have developed a new computational tool.
Renoir helps decode how cells communicate inside complex tissues.
The work published in Nature Communications and offers a powerful way to link cell‑to‑cell signals with changes in gene activity in specific spatial locations within tissues.
What Renoir does
- Cells in each organ constantly “talk” to each other using molecular signals.
- It coordinates tissue development, immune responses, and disease such as cancer.
- Modern techniques called spatial transcriptomics can now map gene activity while preserving the exact position of each cell.
- But it has been hard to know which incoming signals actually change gene expression in a given cell.
Renoir solves this by:
- Using spatial transcriptomics data to identify which cells are communicating.
- Predicting how those signals affect downstream genes in the receiving cells.
- Revealing “communication niches”—specific regions of a tissue where certain signaling pathways are active.
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Scientific and medical impact
Prof. Hamim Zafar explained that Renoir allows researchers to see how a precise signaling interaction alters gene activity in receiving cells, helping to identify disease‑driving communication networks, especially in cancer.
The tool tested using datasets from fetal liver and liver‑cancer samples generated in collaboration with Prof. Ankur Sharma’s lab at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Australia.
Renoir successfully uncovered biologically meaningful interactions linked to tumor progression and developmental processes.
Tool design and availability
The researchers named the tool Renoir after the French Impressionist painter,
As it “paints” the activity of interacting genes across the 2D tissue landscape.
The method works with major spatial‑profiling platforms used worldwide and is designed to accelerate research in cancer biology, developmental biology, and precision medicine.
Renoir is open‑source and freely available to the research community at:
github.com/Zafar-Lab/Renoir.
FAQs Renoir by IIT Kanpur
Renoir is a new computational tool developed by researchers at IIT Kanpur to study how cells communicate inside complex tissues.
Renoir was developed by a research team led by Prof. Hamim Zafar at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.
It helps researchers understand how signals between cells affect gene activity in specific spatial locations within a tissue.
Renoir uses spatial transcriptomics data to map cell communication and identify active signaling interactions across tissues.
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