It's rare to see an entire technology category reach escape velocity in a single quarter. But in Q1 2026, spatial biology did exactly that.

At AGBT 2026, the industry's biggest genomics players showed their hands — Illumina debuted a first-of-its-kind spatial platform, Bruker expanded its spatial portfolio with new instruments, and a wave of vendor collaborations signaled that the technology is ready for mainstream adoption. The message was unmistakable: spatial biology is no longer a research novelty. It's becoming clinical infrastructure.

At Dexter, we see this shift in real time — and the data tells a story the vendor announcements don't.

The Vendor Arms Race Is On

For years, spatial biology was a niche corner of the multi-omics landscape, dominated by a handful of platforms with limited throughput and steep learning curves. That era is ending.

At AGBT 2026, the spatial omics landscape looked dramatically different from even a year ago:

• Illumina unveiled its first-ever spatial transcriptomics technology, with commercial launch planned for 2026. The genomics giant entering spatial signals that the market has reached a size worth competing for.
• 10x Genomics now offers Visium HD, a whole-transcriptome spatial profiling platform at single-cell resolution — a capability that didn't exist two years ago. At AGBT 2026, the company showcased expanded applications including Visium HD Cell Segmentation for morphology-guided analysis and Visium HD XL for larger tissue sections.
• Bruker, which acquired NanoString Technologies in 2024, showcased an expanding spatial portfolio at AGBT 2026 — the legacy CosMx and GeoMx platforms alongside new additions PaintScape and CellScape XR, signaling aggressive investment in the category.
• Takara Bio and Illumina announced a collaboration on a reagent-kit-based spatial transcriptomics workflow, combining Takara's Trekker single-cell spatial mapping kit with Illumina's RNA prep assay.

When multiple major vendors compete aggressively in a single quarter, it signals a technology crossing from early adoption into mainstream consideration. The spatial biology market is projected to grow significantly through 2035, with AI bridging the gap between routine pathology and spatial omics as a key growth driver.

What We're Seeing: A Multi-Year Demand Curve That Keeps Steepening

The vendor announcements tell you what's being built. Our data tells you what the industry is doing about it.

Dexter has facilitated spatial biology projects since 2019 — long before most of the industry was paying attention. In the early years, these were sporadic: one or two a year, typically from a single genomics-focused client exploring a niche technology. That's changed dramatically. By 2024, spatial biology projects had grown to roughly seven times the annual volume we saw in 2021, with demand coming from a widening range of clients — strategy consultants, biopharma market access teams, and life sciences investors, not just R&D groups. The projects themselves have evolved too: from general landscape assessments to highly specific briefs on platform selection, translational workflow design, and software needs.

That trajectory has continued into 2025 and 2026, with new spatial projects now spanning agentic AI tools for spatial biomarker analysis, market landscape studies, and technology usage surveys enrolling dozens of experts.

Our expert network reflects the same momentum. The number of spatial-omics specialists in our network more than doubled last year, with over a third of all spatial biology experts joining in just the last 15 months. Spatial and imaging technologies now rank among the most prevalent capability tags across our knowledge base — a deep and rapidly expanding bench of expertise that's keeping pace with the industry's appetite.

We've seen this pattern before. When liquid biopsy moved from research to clinical adoption several years ago, both project demand and expert signups on our platform accelerated sharply before the broader market recognized the shift. Spatial biology appears to be on the same trajectory, but compressed into a shorter timeline.

Why Strategic Expertise Matters More Than Ever

When a technology is new enough that most people who understand it are still building it, the gap between "scientific knowledge" and "strategic perspective" is especially wide. That's where expert networks become critical.

The projects landing on our platform reveal what pharma and biotech teams actually need right now. It's not just "explain the science" — it's decision-grade expertise from people who have:

• Compared platforms head-to-head in real laboratory settings — not just read the spec sheets
• Designed translational workflows that connect spatial data to clinical endpoints
• Navigated the practical challenges of tissue preparation, imaging throughput, and data analysis at scale
• Understood the regulatory trajectory — where spatial assays are headed as potential companion diagnostics

These cross-functional profiles are the most valuable in any emerging technology. In spatial biology, where the technology itself has been changing every six months, they command premium attention from the industry's most strategic teams.

The Convergence Signal

What makes spatial biology's inflection point particularly noteworthy is that it isn't happening in isolation. The technology is converging with several other fast-moving areas:

• Digital pathology and AI: As AI-powered digital pathology platforms gain FDA clearances and see nationwide clinical rollouts, spatial biology is emerging as the next layer of tissue-level analysis — adding molecular resolution to the morphological data that digital pathology captures.
• Immuno-oncology and ADC development: The projects arriving on our platform increasingly sit at the intersection of spatial biology and therapeutic development. A recent engagement brought together spatial biology, antibody-drug conjugates, digital pathology, and clinical biomarker strategy in a single brief — with experts drawn from translational science and precision medicine roles at major biopharma companies. Spatial biology's ability to map the tumor microenvironment is fundamentally reshaping how immunotherapy and ADC response is predicted and evaluated.
• Multimodal precision oncology: AACR 2026 is dedicating sessions to AI-based tissue biomarkers, deep learning in digital pathology, and spatial approaches to companion diagnostics. The era of single-analyte biomarker testing is giving way to integrated, multi-omic workflows where spatial biology plays a central role.

This convergence is why the expert demand isn't just coming from spatial biology specialists. It's coming from oncology teams, pathology labs, diagnostics companies, and AI/digital health firms — all of whom need spatial biology expertise as part of a broader strategy, not in isolation.

Looking Ahead

The spatial biology inflection point has several implications for the life sciences industry in 2026 and beyond:

For pharma and biotech teams: The vendor landscape is now competitive enough that platform selection decisions carry real strategic weight. Choosing the wrong spatial platform — or the wrong moment to adopt — can mean lost time and investment. Independent expert guidance has never been more valuable.

For spatial biology professionals: Your expertise is in exceptional demand. Whether you're a researcher running Visium or CosMx assays, a pathologist integrating spatial data into diagnostic workflows, or a bioinformatician building spatial analysis pipelines — the industry is actively seeking your perspective. If you've been considering sharing your expertise as a consultant or advisor, this is an opportune time: spatial biology is at the stage where hands-on practitioners shape how an entire technology category gets adopted. Join our expert network and put that experience to work.

For investors and strategists: The spatial biology vendor arms race, combined with convergence toward clinical applications, suggests this technology is on the same adoption curve that NGS followed — from research tool to clinical standard. The companies and teams that build spatial capabilities now will be positioned to lead as the technology matures.

Right now, spatial biology sits at a rare intersection: a technology mature enough that major vendors are competing for market share, yet new enough that most of the industry is still forming its strategy around it. That's the definition of an inflection point — and the demand we're tracking suggests the industry knows it.

Dexter is a precision medicine expert network that connects life sciences professionals with paid consulting and strategic advisory opportunities. Our spatial biology expert pool has more than doubled in the past year — if you work with spatial transcriptomics, multiplex imaging, or computational spatial analysis and want to share your expertise with industry decision-makers, learn more about joining the Dexter network.

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