AGBT: Spatial Biology Field ‘Maturing’ as Updates Well-Received, if Not Flashy

Mar 04, 2026 | Andrew P. Han | Huanjia Zhang

NEW YORK – New developments in spatial biology technology had a muted reception at this year’s Advances in Genome Biology and Technology general meeting, as sequencing technology developments stole the headlines.

Some firms who had hawked spatial platforms here in the past avoided the spotlight. Aside from teasing an upcoming announcement, 10x Genomics was mostly invisible and Akoya Biosciences — now owned by Quanterix — didn’t appear to have any presence whatsoever.

Still, around half a dozen companies took the opportunity to announce updates and highlight data from their platforms. Bruker touted two new platforms, Paintscape and CellScape, in addition to its spatial transcriptomics offerings acquired from NanoString Technologies. Stellaromics officially launched its 3D spatial transcriptomics platform, Pyxa. And sequencing-based on-instrument methods from Illumina, Element Biosciences, and Singular Genomics all took a step forward.

The tone was epitomized by Vizgen, which now offers an on-instrument quality control assay, said Jasmine Plummer, director of the Center for Spatial Omics at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“Not being able to QC a slide has always been something I’ve struggled with,” she said, considering how expensive each spatial sample can be to run. “It’s not as splashy, but it means the field is maturing.”