New York Genome Center (NYGC) has received a USD 2.68 million NIH R01 grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute to develop a cost-accessible platform for spatial multi-omic profiling — addressing a persistent technical and financial bottleneck in tissue biology research.
Current single-cell methods can capture epigenomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic data simultaneously, but lose spatial context when tissues are dissociated. Spatial transcriptomics preserves tissue architecture, but remains largely unimodal and expensive, requiring specialized consumables and capital equipment that limit adoption. The NYGC project, led by Sanja Vickovic, aims to resolve this by building sequencing-based capture surfaces with 1-micron spatial resolution, an integrated multi-omic readout validated in aging brain tissue, and a PCR-free method called spatial inference via localized concatemerization (SILC) that encodes spatial information through sequencing alone — removing the need for costly imaging hardware.
The approach is designed modularly: each component can function independently to augment existing spatial platforms or operate as an integrated system, lowering barriers to adoption across laboratories with varying resources.
The spatial biology field is increasingly crowded. 10x Genomics dominates with its Visium and Xenium platforms, while companies including Vizgen, Akoya Biosciences, and Bruker's spatial biology division compete on resolution and multiplexing. Academic platforms such as Slide-seq and HDST have demonstrated sequencing-based spatial approaches but have not achieved broad accessibility. NYGC's focus on cost reduction and user-friendliness, rather than resolution alone, positions this effort differently — targeting the accessibility gap rather than competing on instrument performance.