Illumina has officially announced the launch of its new spatial technology, which will make it possible for researchers to map complex tissues and understand cellular behavior at an unprecedented scale.
According to certain reports, the stated technology will leverage Illumina sequencers and a new multimodal analysis platform to achieve outright unbiased whole-transcriptome profiling with cellular resolution and high sensitivity. These capabilities, on their part, are expected to drive expansion of spatial research, as well as unlock applications and experiments that were previously not possible.
More on that would reveal how Illumina spatial technology will let researchers examine the spatial proximity of millions different cells per experiment, something which is only to be further enabled by a capture area nine times larger than existing technologies, and with four times greater resolution.
Hence, with a facility in place to let researchers analyze more cells in a single spatial experiment, the technology provides you necessary foundation to identify rare cell populations, and at the same time, improve statistical power for greater confidence in findings. Thanks to that, it will also deliver the highest value for single-cell and spatial researchers at a more affordable price point.
Exceeding industry standards for scale and accuracy, the new solution under focus here is also compatible with Illumina NextSeq and NovaSeq sequencers, thus materially reducing the cost of running large-scale programs.
Another detail worth a mention here is rooted in the fact that Illumina’s spatial technology will actually function alongside the company’s new software platform, Illumina Connected Multiomics (ICM). ICM is basically a multimodal analysis platform, which enables researchers to easily visualize the results of spatial experiments. Furthermore, the software helps them navigate, explore, and analyze multiomic data sets so to drive deeper insights from biological data.
Beyond that, ICM’s intuitive design and seamless integration with the sequencing workflow will allow any scientist to generate powerful statistical insights and interactive visualizations for decoding multiple complex modalities, such as genomic, proteomic, spatial transcriptomic, epigenetic, and single-cell data, all in the same platform.
“Spatial transcriptomics opens entirely new pathways to gain crucial insight into the cellular function of organisms,” said Steve Barnard, PhD, chief technology officer of Illumina. “Illumina spatial technology will deliver another complete workflow on our leading sequencing platforms. With this innovation, we are setting a new bar that will drive the next wave of scientific discoveries and unlock a deeper understanding of biology—from the impact of cell interactions on disease to the mechanisms needed to solve them.”
Illumina also took this opportunity to announce a partnership with the Broad Institute, a partnership which will focus on advancing one novel Spatial Flagship Project. Relying upon Illumina’s proprietary technology, the said project will be conducted at the Broad Institute’s Spatial Technology Platform (STP), with sequencing performed at Broad Clinical Labs.
Talk about the agreed terms on a slightly deeper level, this particular partnership will reap the benefits of Illumina technology’s expansive 50 mm by 15 mm imaging area for enhanced flexibility, sensitivity, resolution, and unbiased whole-transcriptome discovery. This it will do to showcase transformative potential of large-scale spatial datasets.
Furthermore, the collaboration will generate large-scale, coordinated data from hundreds of samples provided by Broad Institute principal investigators, with the goal of advancing discovery in spatial technology market. On top of that, the project will offer early access to Illumina’s spatial technology for external research groups through the Broad Institute’s STP pipeline, fostering broader engagement and accelerating innovation.
Apart from that, Illumina plans on conducting a workshop at AGBT, where researchers from the Broad Institute, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and TGen will share data on real-world advances made possible by the new spatial technology.
For instance, Nicholas Banovich, PhD, associate director of the Division of Bioinnovation and Genome Sciences and the Center for Spatial Multi-Omics at TGen, will present his findings that underscore the power of high-resolution spatial transcriptomics to uncover novel disease mechanisms in pulmonary fibrosis.
Joining him would be Michal Lipinski, PhD, of the Broad Institute, who led spatial research to build 3D reconstructions of mouse brains and achieved breakthroughs in the breadth of data achievable from 10 experiments on one slide, a feat never clocked before.
