As the costs of sequencing and genomics tools plummet, spatial biology is becoming increasingly harnessed in drug discovery and development. Here are the top five companies leading the fast-changing spatial biology market.
Traditionally, researchers sequence genetic material from whole tissues and tumors. While this method provides reams of information about the biology of disease, it can miss out on spatial patterns of gene and protein expression within tissues that provide crucial clues about diseases. On the flip side, classical methods of visualizing spatial gene expression, such as immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridization, can only show a handful of genes or proteins at a time.
Having emerged in the last few decades, techniques like spatial transcriptomics and proteomics blend spatial data with deep genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic insights to uncover novel disease biomarkers that can help distinguish tumors from healthy tissue.
The potential of spatial biology is seeing increasing industry interest and adoption for uses in drug discovery and development, with the global market set to balloon by 12.4% per year, from $533 million in 2023 to almost $1 billion by 2029.
The growing traction of spatial biology has led large players such as Illumina and Danaher to strengthen their presence in the field and snap up key players in acquisition deals. However, the field is also seeing challenges such as high prices of equipment and a complex legal environment, which can be intimidating for small companies.
Check out the five top providers tackling these challenges and bringing spatial biology to the research bench, as judged by revenue in the area.
1. 10x Genomics
Founded: 2012 | Headquarters: Pleasanton, California
Market cap: $1.35 billion
10x Genomics was founded by veterans from QuantaLife and 23andMe with a focus on advancing sequencing technologies. The company made a big splash with a $448.5 million initial public offering on the Nasdaq in 2019.
In recent years, the company has steadily expanded its spatial biology know-how with the acquisitions of startups like the U.S. firm ReadCoor and Swedish players Spatial Transcriptomics and Cartana.
10x Genomics’ transcriptomics technologies can be used in therapeutic areas like oncology, neurology, and immunology. Among its products are Visium for transcriptome spatial discovery and Xenium for single-cell spatial imaging. The company has also developed tools to analyze the resulting reams of spatial data efficiently.
10x Genomics reported an annual revenue of $610.8 million in 2024, a 1% drop relative to its 2023 revenue of $618.7 million. Of this, its revenue for consumables and instruments for spatial biology reached $178.6 million, an increase of 32.5% relative to the previous year’s $134.8 million. And in spite of the “current uncertainty within U.S. academic research,” management expects a potential revenue growth of up to 3% in 2025, the company said.
The firm is also no stranger to the litigious scene of spatial biology, having crossed swords with the likes of NanoString Technologies and Vizgen in the past.
2. Akoya Biosciences
Founded: 2015 | Headquarters: Marlborough, Massachusetts
Market cap: $88.2 million
Akoya, which dubs itself “The Spatial Biology Company,” was originally founded to commercialize imaging technology developed at Stanford University. The firm acquired PerkinElmer’s imaging technology, called Phenoptics (now Phenolmager®), in 2018. It launched as a public company in 2021, bagging $151.3 million in an IPO on the Nasdaq.
The company is geared to overcome technical challenges in spatial biology, such as complex and slow workflows and large data storage requirements. To do this, it markets products like the high-speed imaging device PhenoCycler-Fusion 2.0 and scalable multiplexing with manageable data file sizes.
Akoya has also inked partnerships to enhance its technology and market reach with collaborators like Agilent Technologies, Enable Medicine, Nikon, and PathAI.
In January 2025, Akoya caught the eye of the $302 million market-cap-company Quanterix Corporation, which acquired the former in an all-stock transaction set to close in early 2025. The decision was based on expanding Quanterix’s market, saving costs, and shoring up the firm’s cash balance.
Akoya bagged $60.3 million in revenue over the first nine months of 2024, less than the $70.1 million it earned for the same period of 2023. This was partly due to underperformance in the third quarter, which was chalked up to “ongoing capital equipment purchase constraints seen across the life science tools market,” stated Brian McKelligon, CEO of Akoya.
Amid layoffs at the company, Akoya expects to earn $80–85 million in 2024.
3. Bruker Corporation
Founded: 1960 | Headquarters: Billerica, Massachusetts
Market cap: $7.7 billion
Bruker was first established as Bruker Physik by university professor Günther Laukien, PhD. However, the company took the name of co-founder Emil Bruker as university professors in Germany at the time were not allowed to commercialize their research while still teaching.
Bruker initially focused on developing technology based on nuclear magnetic resonance for use in chemistry, but soon branched out to selling other scientific equipment.
The company has rapidly expanded its spatial biology expertise via the acquisition of startups in the field like Canopy Biosciences in 2020, Acuity Spatial Genomics in 2021, and NanoString Technologies in 2024. The $392.6 million acquisition of NanoString happened by auction months after the startup filed for bankruptcy following a legal battle with 10x Genomics.
Later in 2024, Bruker blended its spatial biology assets into a new division called Bruker Spatial Biology, designed to help customers working in oncology, immunology, and neuroscience. Its main products on offer include the CosMx™ Spatial Molecular Imager for single-cell spatial transcriptomics, the CellScape™ proteomics system for immunofluorescence imaging, GeoMx® for whole-tissue spatial multiomics, and nCounter® to quantify gene expression.
Bruker bagged $3.4 billion in revenue in 2024, up from almost $3 billion in 2023, and targets around $3.5 billion in revenue in 2025. The company’s Nano segment, which contains its spatial biology business, reported almost $1.1 billion in revenue last year, up from $941.9 million in 2023.
4. Bio-Techne Corporation
Founded: 1976 | Headquarters: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Market cap: $10.2 billion
Bio-Techne was first established as Research and Diagnostic Systems, which became publicly traded in 1985 through a merger with the Techne Corporation. The initial focus was supplying proteins, antibodies, and immunoassays for research and other components for diagnostic use.
Recently, Bio-Techne expanded into a range of other fields including spatial biology, with key acquisitions like Advanced Cell Diagnostics (ACD) in 2016 for up to $325 million and Lunaphore for $170 million in 2023.
The company’s main spatial biology offerings include RNAscope™, used to detect RNA expression on tissue sections, and COMET™, an automated system to visualize proteins in tissue slides. These technologies help users unpack cellular interactions in fields such as oncology, immunology, neuroscience, and infectious disease.
Across all of its segments, Bio-Techne raked in revenues of $1.1 billion and almost $1.2 billion in the 2023 and 2024 financial years, respectively, which end on June 30. Of this total, the Diagnostics and Genomics segment earned $292.6 million and $326.3 million in the financial years of 2023 and 2024, respectively.
The period from October to December 2024 saw 12% revenue growth in Bio-Techne’s Diagnostics and Spatial Biology segment compared with the same period in 2023, with president and CEO Kim Kelderman hailing “early signs of improvement in the biopharma end-market.”
Bio-Techne also has its own litigation tussle with Molecular Instruments, with an ongoing dispute regarding the intellectual property surrounding its RNAscope technology in Europe.
5. Standard BioTools
Founded: 1999 | Headquarters: South San Francisco, California
Market cap: $600 million
Standard BioTools was originally founded with the name Mycometrix in 1999 and rebranded to Fluidigm in 2001. The company went public in 2011, raising $75 million in an IPO. The company arrived at its current name in 2022 amid a $250 million investment infusion from Casdin Capital and Viking Global Investors.
Standard BioTools offers a wide array of biomedical research equipment, including devices based on mass cytometry and microfluidics, with applications in fields like oncology, immunology, and immunotherapy.
One of Standard BioTools’ spatial biology products, the Hyperion XTi Imaging System, generates high-dimensional spatial proteomics data using imaging mass cytometry. This technique uses metal-tagged antibodies to seek a target in a cell and then employs mass spectrometry to detect the metal tags. Relative to immunofluorescence, this method avoids issues like autofluorescence that can make signals harder to detect.
Standard BioTools has worked with a number of companies to develop its spatial biology expertise, including Visiopharm and Navignostics. It also took over the proteomics specialist SomaLogic in an all-stock merger in 2023.
The company reported revenues of $192.5 million and $175.1 million in 2023 and 2024, respectively, with the expectation of earning up to $175 million in 2025. The company is also on the lookout for growth opportunities with investments and M&A options “in an uncertain environment,” stated president and CEO Michael Egholm, PhD.
Jonathan Smith is a freelance science journalist based in the U.K. and Spain. He previously worked in Berlin as reporter and news editor at Labiotech, a website covering the biotech industry. Prior to this, he completed a PhD in behavioral neurobiology at the University of Leicester and freelanced for the U.K. organizations Research Media and Society of Experimental Biology. He has also written for medwireNews, Biopharma Reporter, and Outsourcing Pharma.
