Spatial biology is among the smaller segments of the broader life sciences market. One estimate issued in August by Research And Markets, has the market growing from 2021-2028 at a 10% compound annual growth rate $484.22 million, which would put its value this year at just under $250 million.

The field made its way into the mainstream of genomic science when, under the term spatially resolved transcriptomics, it was unanimously recognized in January by editors of Nature as Method of the Year 2020: “This maintenance of spatial context is crucial for understanding key aspects of cell biology, developmental biology, neurobiology, tumor biology and more, as specialized cell types and their specific organization are crucially tied to biological activity and remain poorly explored on the scale of whole tissues and organisms.