Tissue function is dictated not just by which cells are present, but by where they sit and who they talk to. It’s becoming widely appreciated that the spatial organisation of cells within tissues is a key factor in the development of the next generation of therapeutics, as microstructure, cellular niches, and local signalling gradients drive homeostasis and disease. Spatial transcriptomics captures this missing dimension, measuring gene expression while preserving the anatomical architecture that conventional single cell approaches discard.
In this talk, I will: introduce the current landscape of spatial transcriptomics, including available and emerging technologies/platforms; discuss the advantages, disadvantages and limitations of each technology; outline the practical trade-offs between resolution, panel size, and tissue scale; highlight the importance of analytics and bioinformatics, even at the experimental design phase; and argue that platform choice should follow the biological question rather than the reverse.
The aim is to provide a grounded perspective of what spatial transcriptomics can genuinely deliver for our current and future era of biological discovery.