The genomics community’s long wait for 10x Genomics’ highly anticipated news is finally over. On Saturday night, at the Hard Rock Café Hotel in San Diego—across the street from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) conference—the company hosted the “Impossible” party to announce its new spatial instrument—the Atera. Serge Saxonov, PhD, CEO of 10x Genomics, walking onto the stage to thunderous applause, noted that there is “a gap between what we need to see and what we have been able to measure.” The Atera, which enables whole-transcriptome spatial biology at scale, “obliterates the typical trade offs” that come with existing spatial tools, he said. “This is the biggest launch in our history. I am the most excited I’ve ever been about any product, or any product category, across the board,” Saxonov told GEN. “It has been a long time in development, and it is what we have known the world needs for a long time. I think it will fundamentally change how we measure and understand biology, and it really puts research on a new trajectory. It is really exciting to be at a place now where we can deliver it to the world.” Nuts and bolts Atera offers more plex, throughput, and sensitivity than 10x Genomics’ Xenium—enabling whole-transcriptome at scale. More specifically, when compared to Xenium, Atera has four times the throughput, six times higher plex capacity for targeted assays, 3.6x higher plex, and 2–3x sensitivity for whole transcriptome assays. 10x Genomics Atera The price for Atera is…
