Industry collaboration

From inventions to investable companies.

The starting position

Sweden leads this field.

Spatial biology is one of the rare fields born here that is now shaping science around the world.

Swedish laboratories produced foundational technologies such as Spatial Transcriptomics, in situ sequencing and HybISS, and the commercial platforms they became: Visium, Visium HD and Xenium. Swedish publications lead the field on citations per publication. The cluster’s goal is to consolidate and further advance this position.

Two charts. Left: citations per publication by country, where Sweden is highest in both 2015 to 2020 and 2021 to 2025, ahead of the Netherlands, Canada, France, Japan, the UK, Germany, the USA and China. Right: number of public datasets per spatial technology, where Visium leads by a wide margin ahead of GeoMX WTA, GeoMX DSP, Xenium and MERFISH; Visium, Xenium, ST, ISS, Visium HD and HybISS are marked as invented in Sweden. — Citations per publication by country, and public datasets by spatial technology. Six of the methods in use worldwide were invented in Sweden. Source: Museum of Spatial Transcriptomics, 25 May 2026.

A track record of translation

Two Swedish companies became the two platforms the field runs on.

Acquired by 10x Genomics · 2018
Visium
Spatial Transcriptomics AB
Joakim Lundeberg, Jonas Frisén and Patrik Ståhl
Acquired by 10x Genomics in December 2018. The Stockholm team joined the company, and the method became Visium — today the most widely used spatial platform in the world.
SciLifeLab (opens in a new tab)
Acquired by 10x Genomics · 2020
Xenium
Cartana AB
Mats Nilsson and colleagues at Stockholm University
Acquired by 10x Genomics in August 2020. Its in situ chemistry became part of Xenium, and Mats Nilsson joined 10x Genomics as a scientific advisor.
Nordic Life Science (opens in a new tab)

Joakim Lundeberg and Mats Nilsson helped turn their research into companies that were later acquired by the company now shaping the market, while remaining active in the field. The cluster builds on this legacy to drive the next wave of innovation in spatial biology.

10x Genomics

A TRACK RECORD OF INNOVATION

Innovation supported by competitive funding and recognised by awards.

Cluster investigators have won competitive funding from European and Swedish research funders, including the European Research Council, the Swedish Research Council, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Formas and the Swedish National Space Agency. Their innovations have also been recognised in their own right: in 2026 Joakim Lundeberg received the Gold Medal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences for developing spatial transcriptomics, now a standard tool in the life sciences worldwide. Together, the grants and awards reflect the breadth of innovation driving the cluster's work.

2026IVA Gold Medal
Joakim Lundeberg
Awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences for ground-breaking contributions to molecular biotechnology and genomics, in particular the development of spatial transcriptomics. The method was commercialised through the spin-off Spatial Transcriptomics AB, later acquired by 10x Genomics, and underlies the Visium platform used in research and drug development worldwide.
IVA (opens in a new tab)
2026KAW AI Consultancy Grant
Gonçalo Castelo-Branco
2026KAW AI Consultancy Grant
Eduardo Villablanca
2026ERC Proof of Concept
Emma R. Andersson
2026ERC Advanced Grant
Igor Adameyko
2025ERC Proof of Concept
Gonçalo Castelo-Branco
2024Wallenberg Scholar
Joakim Lundeberg
2024VR Distinguished Professor
Joakim Lundeberg
Next-generation spatial biology in health and disease — 30.4 million SEK from the Swedish Research Council over eight years, 2025–2032, to develop new methods for studying biomolecules in tissue sections, such as mapping metabolites and peptides in immune cells, and to combine them with AI prediction for a new picture of tissue ecosystems in health and disease. The aim is innovative technology for medical questions such as organ development, neurological disease and cancer.
Swedish Research Council (opens in a new tab)
2024VR Project Grant
Stefania Giacomello
2024SNSA Career Support Grant
Stefania Giacomello
The impact of space travel on the brain — a career support grant of 2.1 million SEK from the Swedish National Space Agency over 2025–2027. Brain tissue from mice flown on the International Space Station is analysed with single-cell multiomics, spatial transcriptomics and spatial mass spectrometry, and the molecular signatures are compared with mouse models of Parkinson’s disease, to understand how the brain adapts to extreme environments.
Swedish National Space Agency (opens in a new tab)
2024Wallenberg Scholar
Gonçalo Castelo-Branco
2024KAW Project Grant
Eduardo Villablanca and Stefania Giacomello
A spatially functional atlas of the healing intestinal barrier. The project maps the genes, cell types and signalling pathways behind the gut mucosa's own ability to heal, using single-cell analysis and spatial metatranscriptomics, and tests them in engineered 3D organoids, pointing to treatments for inflammatory bowel disease beyond immunosuppression. 26 million SEK over five years, with Charlotte Hedin at Karolinska Institutet as co-investigator.
Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (opens in a new tab)
2024KAW Project Grant
Camilla Engblom and Joakim Lundeberg
Spatially resolving tumor and immune clonal niches in human breast cancer. Spatial transcriptomics maps where B cells, plasma cells and antibodies sit inside the tumor and what they bind, while cultured tumor cells show which antibodies kill cancer cells, as leads for new antibody therapies. 26 million SEK over five years, with Jonas Frisén and Johan Hartman at Karolinska Institutet as co-investigators.
Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (opens in a new tab)
2024ERC Consolidator Grant
Emma R. Andersson
2023ERC Synergy Grant
Eduardo Villablanca and Stefania Giacomello
CartoHostBug, a functional cartography of intestinal host–microbiome interactions, mapping how disturbances in the gut microbiome lead to inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer. €10 million shared by four principal investigators: Villablanca and Giacomello from the cluster, with Julio Saez-Rodriguez (Heidelberg University Hospital) and Georg Zeller (EMBL).
CORDIS, European Commission (opens in a new tab)
2023ERC Starting Grant
Michael Ratz
SpaRC — revealing the wiring rules of neural circuit assembly with spatiotemporally resolved molecular connectomics. Genetic barcodes delivered by engineered viruses record which neurons connect, read out with spatially resolved RNA sequencing, to ask how genetic variation linked to autism spectrum disorder shapes the brain's wiring. €1.5 million, hosted at Karolinska Institutet and running 2024–2029.
CORDIS, European Commission (opens in a new tab)
2022Formas Grant
Eduardo Villablanca
2021ERC Advanced Grant
Joakim Lundeberg
2019ERC Synergy Grant
Igor Adameyko
2015ERC Consolidator Grant
Igor Adameyko
2015ERC Consolidator Grant
Carolina Wählby