SAN FRANCISCO – 10x Genomics highlighted its product development roadmap at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference held here this week, with CEO Serge Saxonov detailing forthcoming advances across the company's portfolio.
He capped the firm's presentation with the announcement of the launch of the new Visium HD system, which boosts the resolution of the existing Visium platform from 55 micron spots to 2x2 micron squares, enabling analyses at the single-cell level.
The new system, which is now available for order, aims to meet demand for a higher resolution Visium product, which Saxonov said has been among the most frequent requests by the company's customers. To date, 10x has placed more than 500 of the original Visium systems.
In an interview with GenomeWeb, 10x Chief Technology Officer Michael Schnall-Levin said that like the existing Visium system, the HD platform will provide whole-transcriptome measurements, with the company also offering panels for both human and mouse.
Schnall-Levin said the Visium HD will not initially offer protein measurements but that the company plans to add that capability down the road.
Like Saxonov, Schnall-Levin said 10x has seen strong demand for a higher resolution Visium system.
"It's definitely by far the biggest thing that people have wanted from us," he said. "There have been a number of applications where people have been able to be really successful on standard Visium, but pretty much everyone we talk to has said they want higher resolution."
Single-cell resolution is "critical for a number of questions," Schnall-Levin said. "You have individual cells or a very fine cell layer, and you want to say things about it, and it would have been very challenging to [analyze it] with high confidence before."
10x said pricing for the HD will be slightly less than twice that of the existing Visium platform. Schnall-Levin also said that assays run on the HD system will require around twice as much sequencing to read out the panels as is required for the current instrument. He noted that declining sequencing costs make that less burdensome than it might have been previously.
"Years ago, that might have been a little bit more painful, but I think now, it is landing in a pretty decent spot," he said.
Saxonov also announced coming upgrades to 10x's Chromium and Xenium platforms during his presentation.
Regarding Chromium, he said the company was working on advances in sensitivity, cell recovery, throughput and scale, and ease of use, with the ultimate goal of driving the cost per sample down to $100. Saxonov said that 2023 Chromium revenues totaled roughly $468 million.
With regard to Xenium, he laid out a series of coming improvements, beginning with the rollout in Q1 2024 of improved cell segmentation capabilities. In Q2, the company plans to boost the platform's multiplexing level to around 5,000 targets, and in the second half of the year, it will roll out increased in-line protein multiplexing. Looking toward the end of 2024 and beyond, Saxonov said the company plans to release more mid-plex gene expression panels featuring around 1,000 to 2,000 targets to provide customers with "more flexibility and more options."
10x released preliminary earnings on Monday, projecting fourth quarter revenues of approximately $184.0 million, up 18 percent year over year.
Looking to 2024, 10x CFO Justin McAnear cautioned during the conference presentation that macroeconomic trends could present challenges, noting that "some conservatism is appropriate."