10x Genomics says it’s on monitor to construct out a CLIA-certified laboratory set to open subsequent yr, a part of the spatial and single-cell instruments developer’s growth into medical diagnostics launched earlier this yr.
The lab will open inside 10x’s headquarters campus in Pleasanton, CA, 10x co-founder and CEO Serge Saxonov, PhD, advised GEN.
“That is one nice profit that we’ve got from the truth that we’ve acquired all of the infrastructure right here, and that’s why we really feel like we will actually speed up a few of these sorts of purposes: As a result of we’ve got the area, we’ve got the experience with the expertise, we’ve got the individuals who actually know all of the ins and outs of it, and we will in a short time, validate, new assays, check them, refine them, optimize them,” Saxonov mentioned. “We’ve been seeing that already, within the time that we’ve got been standing up a few of these items, how enabling it’s to have all of it beneath one roof at this stage.
“Constructing a CLIA lab is certainly not a trivial enterprise, however we’ve been making actually nice progress,” he added. “The staff has been standing up these capabilities, and positively on monitor for early subsequent yr. So, very a lot wanting ahead to that.”
The CLIA lab is a key part of 10x’s transfer into medical diagnostics, introduced in January. Historically centered on analysis instruments for educational, authorities, and trade prospects, 10x has moved this yr to launch medical collaborations with top-tier establishments—the latest of which was introduced final month with Cleveland Clinic.
The nonprofit multispecialty tutorial medical heart is partnering with 10x in a multi-year collaboration aimed toward advancing analysis in novel diagnostics for bladder most cancers. Cleveland Clinic has agreed to contribute affected person samples with acceptable phenotypes for evaluation on 10x’s Flex Apex single cell sequencing and Xenium spatial biology platforms.
“They’ve nice entry to sufferers and the suitable sorts of medical trials and therapies which are going by means of their system,” Saxonov mentioned. “We’re working collectively to run single-cell and spatial analyses on them, collaborating on these and correlating the biology that we be taught from single cell and spatial with therapeutic outcomes.”
Bladder most cancers biomarkers
10x and Cleveland Clinic intention to establish biomarkers that predict how bladder most cancers sufferers will reply to rising therapies, comparable to immunotherapies and antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs).
“These biomarkers are definitionally recognized already, however the precise context of their expression isn’t actually that well-known by way of with the ability to predict response,” Saxonov defined. “The query is, if you happen to see their expression within the context of the most cancers cells, or the tumor microenvironment, or the immune compartment, it can then additionally inform response to remedy. And there’s loads of proof from scientific literature that there’s plenty of sign there, a extremely, actually highly effective sign there. What hasn’t been performed is run rigorous, well-powered, clinically, actually fastidiously well-defined research to measure and consider these sorts of biomarkers.”
Oncology is one in every of two therapeutic areas considered as priorities for pursuing translational purposes with an eye fixed towards potential medical diagnostics that deal with remedy choice and monitoring. The opposite space is autoimmune illness.
Saxonov asserted that 10x’s medical push was unrelated to its established analysis enterprise, which shrank final yr as its conventional base of educational and authorities (A&G) prospects reeled from cuts in analysis funding. The minimize prompted 10x to announce plans to remove about 100 jobs—8% of its workforce—although the workforce seems to have solely shrunk by 18 jobs or about 4% final yr, from 491 full-time workers as of December 31, 2024, to 473 on the finish of final yr, based on the corporate’s type 10-Ok annual filings.
“We really feel our analysis enterprise provides us an superior basis to now make investments on this way forward for medical purposes. It’s a very, very a lot an enabling factor,” Saxonov mentioned. “It provides us an amazing basis from which to go ahead. It was at all times our plan, at all times our mission, at all times the technique of the corporate that over time, as we develop our applied sciences, we wish most naturally to make them even have a direct medical influence.”
A number of current tendencies have mixed to assist medical growth, Saxonov mentioned:
An growing variety of therapies whose effectiveness in sufferers, and in what mixture, stays unknown to many medical doctors.
A rising physique of single-cell spatial alerts, comparable to gene and protein expression, mapped to the precise bodily coordinates of particular person cells inside a tissue.
Elevated maturing of single cell, spatial, and multiomics applied sciences, leading to extra knowledge and better high quality insights that allow their use within the clinic.
‘A very nice place’
“Investments round workflow, investments round logistics, with the ability to work with distributed collected samples, and in addition with the ability to drive the prices down and scale up these applied sciences—all of that progress now places us in a very nice place to lean into, first, producing medical proof for all these totally different, therapeutic areas, then taking the ensuing info and deploying that within the context of diagnostic exams sooner or later,” Saxonov mentioned.
“Unbiased of no matter is likely to be taking place by way of the analysis market, which can fluctuate over time, is that a number of large-scale tendencies have been converging.”
Is 2026 shaping up as an up yr or a down yr for A&G? Saxonov mentioned he’ll provide insights when 10x releases its second quarter earnings in August.
10x introduced its medical ambitions in January throughout the J.P. Morgan forty fourth Healthcare Convention in San Francisco. The corporate unveiled medical collaborations with two Boston-based establishments, Brigham and Girls’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Most cancers Institute, in addition to the New York-based Most cancers Analysis Institute.
The Most cancers Analysis Institute collaboration focuses on producing “very massive, AI-ready” knowledge units for immunotherapy, Saxonov mentioned, whereas the Dana-Farber and Brigham and Girls’s partnerships heart extra, just like the Cleveland Clinic alliance, on producing medical proof for future diagnostics purposes. Affected person flows have been established, and evaluation is underway within the collaborations with each Boston establishments.
“On the acceptable time, we’ll be updating the world about what we’re studying,” Saxonov added.
