Spatial Biology

Spatial biology preserves the architecture of tissue samples and reveals cellular neighbourhood biology invisible to suspension-based methods. The session covers Visium and CosMx platforms, high-plex MERFISH and seqFISH+, spatial proteomics with CODEX and IMC, atlas-scale projects (Human Tumor Atlas Network), and the bioinformatics challenges of spatial data integration. Discussion addresses spatial pathology and clinical translation in oncology, spatial biology applied to immunology and developmental biology, the cost-per-cell trajectory of spatial methods, neighborhood-based analysis frameworks, and the comparison of spatial transcriptomics vs spatial proteomics in different tissue types.