Spatial Transcriptomics (ST) is a method that allows visualization and quantitative analysis of the transcriptome in individual tissue sections. By placing histological sections on glass slides with arrayed oligonucleotides containing positional barcodes, it is possible to generate high quality cDNA libraries with precise positional information for RNA-seq. This provides transcriptome data in a versatile format for bioinformatics analyses of gene expression within the tissue context, which will be valuable in both research and diagnostics.
Prof Joakim Lundeberg (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) and Prof Jonas Frisén (Karolinska Institutet) received a key initial support from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation in 2012 to develop and use the Spatial Transcriptomics technology for analysis and discovery of transcriptional patterns in tissue, with a focus on the brain. The method has received increasing attention and is currently the basis of several national and international collaborations. The research is predominantly done at Science for Life Laboratory, Stockholm.