10x Genomics Stock

10x Genomics, Inc. operates as a life sciences technology company.

The company focuses on building innovative products and solutions to interrogate, understand and master biology. The company’s integrated solutions include instruments, consumables and software for analyzing biological systems at a resolution and scale that matches the complexity of biology. The company has built deep expertise across diverse disciplines including chemistry, biology, hardware and software. Innovations in all of these areas have enabled the company’s rapidly expanding suite of products, which allow its customers to interrogate biological systems at previously inaccessible resolution and scale. The company’s products have enabled researchers to make fundamental discoveries across multiple areas of biology, including oncology, immunology and neuroscience.

Since launching the company’s first product in mid-2015 through December 31, 2023, the company has sold 5,966 instruments to researchers around the world, including academic and translational researchers and biopharmaceutical companies. The company remains in the very early stages of its penetration into multiple large markets.

The company’s product portfolio consists of multiple integrated platforms that include instruments, consumables and software. These integrated solutions guide customers through the workflow from sample preparation to analysis and visualization.

Each of the company’s platforms is designed to interrogate a major class of biological information that is impactful to researchers at high resolution and scale:

The company’s Chromium platform enables high-throughput analysis of individual biological components. The company’s approach to partitioning and barcoding gives researchers the ability to measure many discrete biological materials and/or perform many different experiments in parallel, providing tremendous resolution and scale. The company’s Chromium platform offers comprehensive solutions to measure tissues at single cell resolution and scale. Chromium enables multiomic readouts, including gene expression, protein, chromatin, V(D)J, CRISPR/guide RNAs (gRNAs) and antigens, has broad sample compatibility (formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE), fresh, frozen and paraformaldehyde (PFA) fixed tissue and whole blood) and delivers high performance, including high cell recovery rates (CRE), high sensitivity, robustness and reproducibility.

The company’s Visium platform empowers researchers to identify where biological components are located and how they are arranged with respect to each other, otherwise referred to as ‘spatial analysis.’ The company’s Visium platform uses high density DNA arrays which have DNA barcode sequences that encode the physical location of biological analytes within a sample, such as a tissue section, allowing the spatial location of the analytes to be ‘read out’ using sequencing to create a visual map of the analytes across the sample. Similar to partitioning, spatial barcoding with large numbers of probes on an array can unlock tremendous insights, providing high resolution genomic information to visualize analytes across biological tissues.

The company’s Xenium platform for in situ analysis is designed to give scientists the ability not only to locate and type cells in their tissue context, but also to address a variety of specific questions based on previous knowledge of their sample often discovered using the company’s Chromium and Visium platforms. Xenium In Situ detects and preserves the cellular localization of hundreds of RNA targets directly in a fresh frozen or FFPE tissue section without the need for conventional sequencing, providing researchers with a detailed map of gene expression patterns without sacrificing resolution or target number.

Collectively, the company’s platforms enable researchers to interrogate, understand and master biology at the appropriate resolution and scale.

The company’s platforms, which enable a comprehensive view of biology, target numerous market opportunities across the more than $67 billion global life sciences research tools market. The company views much of this total market opportunity as ultimately accessible to the company due to its ability to answer a broad diversity of biological questions.

The company has a scalable, multi-channel commercial infrastructure, including a direct sales force in North America and certain regions of Europe and distribution partners in Asia, certain regions of Europe, Oceania, Central America, South America, the Middle East and Africa that drives the company’s customer growth. This is supplemented with an extensive and highly specialized customer service infrastructure with PhD-level specialists. The company has customers in over 50 countries.

Solutions

The company has built and commercialized multiple platforms that allow researchers to interrogate, understand and master biological systems at a resolution and scale commensurate with the complexity of biology. The company’s products overcome the limitations of existing tools. The company’s vision, discipline and multidisciplinary approach have allowed the company to continuously innovate to develop the instruments, consumables and software that underlie the company’s solutions.

Platforms

The company’s platforms are integrated solutions consisted of instruments, consumables and software. They are built with the company’s expertise in chemistry, molecular biology, microfluidics, hardware, computational biology and software engineering. All of the company’s products begin with a researcher’s sample (such as a collection of thousands to millions of cells or a slice of fresh frozen or FFPE tissue). The company’s Chromium platform performs high-throughput barcoding to construct libraries that are compatible with standard third-party sequencers. The company’s Visium platform allows researchers to combine spatially resolved whole transcriptome measurements across tissue sections with a high-resolution image. Up to millions of unique, arrayed barcodes that represent a spatial location allow for analytes to be captured from tissue, spatially barcoded and then mapped back to their original tissue location after sequencing. The company’s Xenium platform includes the Xenium Analyzer, a fully automated instrument that integrates sample handling, liquid handling and imaging. In this workflow, targeted probes are hybridized to tissue sections on Xenium slides, which are then processed on the company’s Xenium Analyzer. Sequencing is not required. The company’s proprietary software then provides turn-key analysis pipelines and intuitive visualization tools for all of the company’s platforms that allows researchers to easily interpret the biological data from the samples.

Chromium Platform

The company’s Chromium platform, which includes its Chromium X Series, Chromium Connect and legacy Chromium Controller instruments, microfluidic chips and related consumables, enables high-throughput analysis of individual biological components. The Chromium instruments serve as precisely engineered reagent delivery systems that divide a sample into individual components in up to a million or more partitions, enabling large numbers of parallel micro-reactions. The Chromium platform can be used to partition not only single cells, but also other biological materials such as cell nuclei and DNA molecules. The large numbers of partitions generated using the company’s Chromium products can be used for analyzing samples at high resolution and on massive scale. The company pairs a partitioned sample with its proprietary gel beads bearing barcodes that allow researchers to uniquely identify the contents of each partition and distinguish them from contents of other partitions. The company refers to the partitions that are generated on the company’s Chromium platform as ‘GEMs,’ which stands for Gel beads in EMulsion. The company collectively refers to its partitioning and barcoding technologies as the company’s GemCode technology.

The company’s Chromium X and iX, Chromium Connect and microfluidic chips. The company’s Chromium consumables run on its Chromium instruments. The company’s Chromium iX instrument is capable of running its Standard Throughput consumables. The company’s Chromium X instrument is capable of running its Standard and High Throughput consumables. Customers are able to purchase a license that upgrades their Chromium iX to a Chromium X, unlocking the ability to run the company’s High Throughput consumables. The company has designed its instruments to be widely accessible to researchers and each of these instruments has a form factor that easily fits on a standard laboratory bench. The company’s Chromium instruments operate exclusively with its microfluidic chips, which are highly engineered single-use devices that process samples and reagents. During the company’s Chromium workflows, the researcher loads a sample onto the microfluidic chip along with the company’s proprietary gel beads and oils. The loaded chip is inserted into the Chromium instrument, which facilitates the generation of GEMs that contain sample and gel beads. The company’s Chromium Connect product is an automated Chromium instrument that incorporates liquid handling robotics to automate the company’s workflow and can be utilized with the company’s Single Cell Gene Expression, Single Cell Gene Expression Flex and Single Cell Immune Profiling solutions.

The company’s Chromium platform provides researchers with the following solutions:

Single Cell Gene Expression

The company’s Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression solution provides customers with the ability to measure the transcriptome of single cells, revealing gene activity and networks on a cell-by-cell basis. This approach enables customers to identify and characterize rare cell types in a population of cells, characterize cell populations without prior knowledge of cell subtypes or cell markers, define novel cell types and cell states, discover new biomarkers for specific cell populations and analyze and understand cellular heterogeneity and its effects on biological systems.

For this solution, customers run their samples of interest on Chromium X Series or Chromium Connect instruments, or on legacy Chromium Controller instruments, to generate GEMs containing single cells and prepare single cell libraries using the company’s reagents. Researchers can sequence these single cell libraries on standard third-party sequencers, analyze their data using the company’s Cell Ranger analysis pipeline software and visualize their data using the company’s Loupe Cell Browser software. The browser displays a visual representation of the data in which cells having similar gene expression profiles are colored and clustered together. Researchers can explore their data by cluster or gene(s) of interest to derive biological meaning from the visualizations.

The company’s Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression solution uses its proprietary biochemistry, GEM-RT, to capture mRNA molecules with high sensitivity. Sensitivity is the number of different mRNA transcripts that can be detected. Higher sensitivities are required to detect mRNA molecules that are present in low abundance in a cell.

Furthermore, the company’s Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression solution can be used with its Feature Barcode technology to simultaneously measure multiple analytes in the same cells. The company’s Feature Barcode is highly customizable, allowing the company’s customers to add a barcode to any biological feature they want to analyze in conjunction with gene expression and other biological data. Feature Barcode can be used to:

Measure cell surface proteins simultaneously with gene expression, giving a far fuller picture of the states of single cells that includes the transcriptional profile inside the cells, as well as the proteins on the outside of the cells; and

Measure a set of CRISPR genetic perturbations that have been applied to a cell simultaneously with the resulting changes to gene expression and/or surface protein characterization, allowing users to interrogate the impact of actively perturbing many different aspects of a biological system in a massively parallel fashion.

Single Cell Gene Expression Flex

In 2022, the company introduced its Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression Flex solution. Like the company’s Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression solution, Flex provides customers with the ability to measure the transcriptome of single cells, revealing gene activity and networks on a cell-by-cell basis. Single cell RNA sequencing is increasingly being used to profile larger numbers of samples, corresponding to cohorts of patients or different perturbations, increasing the importance of an efficient and scalable workflow.

Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression Flex works on samples fixed with paraformaldehyde (PFA), which allows samples to be collected, shipped to a central location and analyzed without sacrificing integrity or data quality, creating new possibilities for sample accessibility, throughput and batched analysis. This advanced chemistry also brings single cell profiling to FFPE tissue, expanding the range of accessible sample types. A key advantage is that customers can fix whole fresh tissue pieces at the point of collection to lock in biological states and preserve fragile cells or use this solution to access archived samples, making it especially suited for translational and clinical labs where fragile samples or time constraints would otherwise preclude single cell analysis. In addition, its probe-based approach requires only a small region of the transcript (50 base pairs in length) to be present in the cell in order for it to be detected, making it compatible with comparably low quality samples such as biopsies or other clinical samples that are prone to have increased levels of fragmented transcripts compared to other sample types. Furthermore, the company’s Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression Flex solution can be used with the company’s Feature Barcode technology to simultaneously measure cell surface proteins and gene expression in the same cells.

Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression Flex allows for profiling up to 1,000,000 fixed single cells at once with a scalable workflow.

Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression Flex can be used exclusively with the company’s Chromium X Series instruments to generate GEMs. Prior to GEM generation, cells are fixed and permeabilized and can be safely stored or transported without compromising data quality. When commencing the experiment using Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression Flex, samples are hybridized to probe sets and may be processed individually (singleplex workflow) or pooled with up to 16 samples in a single lane of a 10x chip (multiplex workflow). During GEM generation the probe sets are ligated and extended to incorporate unique barcodes. Sequencing libraries are then prepared, sequenced and analyzed using the company’s Cell Ranger and Loupe Browser software tools. The library preparation of the Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression Flex workflow is also compatible with the Chromium Connect.

Single Cell Immune Profiling

The company’s Chromium Single Cell Immune Profiling solution is used to study the immune system, which is the body’s natural diagnostic and therapeutic system. The immune system has a vast network of T-cells and B-cells that recognize pathogens using receptor molecules that bind to foreign molecules, or antigens. T-cells and B-cells can generate an immense diversity of receptors that are each specific to a different potential antigen, making it possible for the human body to recognize nearly any conceivable antigen. The company’s Chromium Single Cell Immune Profiling solution enables researchers to study these receptor molecules at the single cell level in conjunction with the transcriptome of the immune cell. Through the use of the company’s solutions, researchers can measure both the T-cell or B-cell receptors while also determining whether the cell has been activated to attack its target or is quiescent and waiting for a threat to emerge. Importantly, because the company’s analysis is performed at the single cell level, the company obtains information regarding the pairing of the sequences of the alpha and beta chains of T-cell receptors or the heavy and light chains of B-cell receptors. This paired receptor information is unavailable from traditional bulk approaches for analyzing immune cells and is critical as it is the pair of receptors that defines the targets of each immune cell. By enabling paired immune receptor and transcriptome analysis in massive numbers of immune cells, the company’s Chromium Single Cell Immune Profiling solution sheds insight on the clonality, diversity and cellular context of the immune repertoire.

The workflow of this solution, which is similar to that of the Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression solution, utilizes the company’s Chromium X Series, Chromium Connect or legacy Chromium Controller to generate GEMs, followed by single cell library preparation and sequencing. In contrast to Gene Expression, the company’s Chromium Single Cell Immune Profiling solution uses a different biochemistry that obtains sequence information from the 5’ end of mRNA molecules, rather than their 3’ end. This biochemistry allows researchers to capture the more information-rich regions of immune receptor transcripts. The company’s Chromium Single Cell Immune Profiling solution also includes a step of enriching for immune receptor transcripts using specific primers to create an immune-specific library that can be sequenced separately from gene expression. The company has also developed specialized pipelines within the company’s Cell Ranger software and a specialized visualization software, Loupe V(D)J Browser, for visualizing the paired immune receptor information derived from this product. This software allows researchers to identify cell type clusters based on gene expression and then layer T-cell and/or B-cell receptor sequence diversity directly onto that visualization, enabling users to easily derive biological meaning from these two different data types. The following visualization is an example showing the diversity of immune receptors and groupings into specific genes and sequences.

Feature Barcode can be used in combination with the company’s Single Cell Immune Profiling solution, adding significant multiomic functionality. Importantly, this functionality allows users to determine the antigen that is bound by immune cells simultaneously with their gene expression. This capability allows researchers to determine both the receptor sequences of individual immune cells as well as an antigen that the receptor targets and makes this analysis practical to perform for millions of immune cells. The capability to understand immune receptor-antigen interactions at a high-throughput single cell level is tremendously valuable for elucidating the rules of immune cell targeting and can be used to understand disease and identify leads for immunotherapies and to assist researchers in constructing an immune map of receptor-antigen targeting rules.

Single Cell ATAC

The company’s Chromium Single Cell ATAC solution enables customers to understand the epigenetic state—including how the genome and its surroundings are modified to ‘open’ and ‘closed’ states, affecting how genes are regulated—in up to millions of cells. While the company’s Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression solution answers the ‘what’ of what makes two cells different from each other, the company’s Chromium Single Cell ATAC solution answers the ‘how.’ These two products are highly complementary and can be used as a powerful combination to analyze both the cause and effect of gene regulation.

ATAC-seq stands for ‘Assay for Transposase Accessible Chromatin using sequencing.’ This technique uses an engineered transposase enzyme to insert nucleic acids tags into the genome while also excising the tagged sequences from its surroundings. ATAC-seq is based on the fact that the transposase enzyme will preferentially tag and excise regions of the genome that have an ‘open’ chromatin state that is unimpeded by proteins bound to genomic DNA. The tagged sequences can be sequenced to infer genomic regions of increased chromatin accessibility as well as map regions that are bound by transcription factor proteins responsible for regulating gene expression. ATAC–seq was pioneered by researchers at Stanford University and intellectual property rights directed to ATAC-seq are exclusively licensed to the company. ATAC-seq has now become an important tool in epigenetics and genome-regulation research.

The company’s Single Cell ATAC solution uses the ATAC-seq assay in conjunction with the company’s Chromium platform to create a product for high-throughput epigenetic interrogation at single cell resolution. In the workflow, users treat cell nuclei with transposase enzyme and then use the company’s Chromium instrument to encapsulate these nuclei in GEMs. The tagged sequences from the nuclei are barcoded inside GEMs and then processed to generate sequencing libraries. Sequencing reads are analyzed using the company’s Cell Ranger ATAC software and visualized using its Loupe Cell Browser, which has been specially configured to display epigenetic data.

The company’s Chromium Single Cell ATAC solution has been adopted by a number of key opinion leaders. In one example, researchers used a combination of single cell transcriptome profiling and single cell ATAC-seq to identify enhancer elements that mark specific sub-classes of cells in the mouse brain. Once these elements are identified they can be targeted in order to generate mice with specific cell types labeled or perturbed at a level of specificity not usually achievable using gene expression alone. The ability to specifically target new cell types of interest allows in-depth investigations of the functions of those targeted cells.

Single Cell Multiome ATAC+Gene Expression

The company’s Chromium Single Cell Multiome ATAC+Gene Expression solution enables customers to link a cell’s epigenetic state, which affects how genes are regulated, directly to its transcriptional output, in up to millions of cells simultaneously. This product is the first commercial solution to enable simultaneous interrogation of both the RNA and chromatin accessibility, using the Assay for Transposase Accessible Chromatin (ATAC) in a single cell. Previously, researchers would profile these two modalities separately using the company’s Single Cell Gene Expression solution and Single Cell ATAC solution, and computationally infer related cell types between the two datasets. However, with the company’s Single Cell Multiome ATAC+Gene Expression solution, it is now possible to directly measure both modalities in the same single cell, providing valuable insights into how the epigenetic landscape in a cell (the ‘input’) directly impacts downstream gene expression (the ‘output’).

The company’s Single Cell Multiome ATAC+Gene Expression solution is similar in workflow to the company’s Single Cell Gene Expression and Single Cell ATAC products on the Chromium platform. In the workflow, users treat cell nuclei with transposase enzyme and then use a 10x Chromium instrument to encapsulate these nuclei in GEMs. The tagged DNA sequences and the mRNA from the nuclei are barcoded inside GEMs and then processed to generate gene expression and ATAC sequencing libraries. Sequencing reads are analyzed using the company’s Cell Ranger ARC software, which has been specifically designed to leverage data from both RNA and ATAC data, and visualized using the company’s Loupe Cell Browser.

Sample preparation solutions. In 2022, the company launched its Nuclei Isolation kit, the company’s first offering to help ease the sample preparation process. This solution provides a simple, scalable workflow to make frozen tissues and previously challenging sample types more accessible for routine single cell analysis.

Many samples which may be biobanked or are not amenable to fresh processing require nuclei isolation for use in single cell sequencing. Nuclei isolation is also necessary to obtain additional layers of cellular information, such as chromatin accessibility. Previously available methods for nuclei isolation from frozen tissue include complex, low-throughput and time-consuming protocols, expensive instruments for sorting and debris removal and the need to optimize workflows for each tissue. The company’s Chromium Nuclei Isolation kit, specifically designed for use with the company’s single cell assays, streamlines nuclei isolation workflows, ensuring reliable assay performance for gene expression or epigenetic studies with little to no optimization for most tissues.

Visium Platform

The company’s Visium platform enables researchers to understand the spatial positions of biological analytes within tissues at high resolution. Such spatial analysis can be critically important in understanding tissue function in both healthy and disease states. For example, in the context of neurobiology, neuronal degeneration in the substantia nigra, an area of the brain associated with movement, results in Parkinson’s disease, while degeneration of upper and lower motor neurons results in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. In the context of cancer treatment, the knowledge of whether T-cells have infiltrated inside of a tumor, rather than merely surrounding the tumor, is an important prognostic indicator. Understanding the spatial relationship of the biological analytes in tissues may hold the key to unlocking the underlying causes and identifying cures for such diseases.

The company’s Visium products are based in part on technology that the company acquired from Spatial Transcriptomics in 2018. Spatial Transcriptomics utilized arrays having specialized probes on their surfaces that are encoded with the spatial position of the probe. In this workflow, a tissue sample is placed onto the array and reagents are added by the user to create barcoded molecules from the array probes and the biological material in the tissues. This barcoded material encodes the spatial information that was contained in the probes. Users then pool the material from the array and follow a protocol to create libraries of molecules that can be sequenced using a standard third-party sequencer. After sequencing, analysis software assigns each sequencing read to its spatial position of origin, aligning with a morphological stain of the tissue section. Collectively, the spatially defined reads provide a visual depiction of the locations and patterns of large numbers of biological analytes simultaneously in the tissue sample.

The Spatial Transcriptomics product performed spatial analysis of mRNAs using arrays that had 1,000 probes with distances of approximately 200 microns between probes. This product was used to identify heterogeneity in metastatic melanoma and to demonstrate that there was significantly more heterogeneity than could be predicted by manual pathology annotation. In an independent study of mouse and human amyotrophic lateral sclerosis samples, researchers were able to observe changes in RNA expression over the disease course, while preserving the understanding of those changes in the spatial context. This allowed them to visualize the key changes that occur in brain regions before and during neuronal degeneration.

The company’s Visium solution for spatial gene expression analysis was launched in late 2019. The company’s Visium Spatial Gene Expression product has significant improvements over the Spatial Transcriptomics product, including increased spatial resolution, increased gene sensitivity, a simpler workflow, compatibility with both hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and immunofluorescence stains, and fully developed analysis and visualization software. The company launched the Visium Spatial Proteogenomics solution providing the capability of combining whole transcriptome analysis and immunofluorescence protein detection within the same tissue section in 2020. In 2021, the company launched Visium Spatial Gene Expression for FFPE which featured an entirely new probe-based chemistry enabling Visium to be applied to FFPE tissues with similarly high sensitivity and the same spatial resolution as fresh frozen samples.

In 2022, the company launched the Visium CytAssist, an instrument designed to simplify the Visium solution workflow by facilitating the transfer of transcriptomic probes from standard glass slides to Visium slides. The Visium CytAssist is a compact, benchtop instrument that enables spatial profiling insights with broad sample access and streamlined workflow logistics allowing the use of pre-sectioned tissues and pre-stained samples with the Visium workflow in both FFPE and fresh frozen samples.

Regardless of the sample type, sectioning, sample preparation, staining by either hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) or immunofluorescence (IF), and imaging take place on a standard glass slide in the Visium CytAssist workflow. After probe hybridization, two standard glass slides and a two capture area Visium Spatial Gene Expression slide are placed in the CytAssist instrument so that the tissue sections on the standard slides can be aligned on top of the two Visium capture areas. Within the instrument, a brightfield image is captured to provide spatial orientation for data analysis, followed by permeabilization of the tissue and transfer of transcriptomic probes to the Visium Spatial Gene Expression slide. The remaining steps, starting with probe extension, follow the standard Visium for FFPE workflow outside of the instrument. Data is visualized using the company’s software tools.

In 2023, the company launched the Visium CytAssist Spatial Gene and Protein Expression assay, introducing the capability to combine whole transcriptome analysis, protein detection and high resolution imaging from the same slide using the Visium CytAssist. The core of this assay is the Human Immune Cell Profiling Panel, an optimized set of probe-conjugated antibodies designed to enable the sequencing read-out of protein expression, designed to overcome the challenges of traditional multiplexed protein detection, such as spectral overlap and limitations of antibody host species. This assay also supports customization of protein readout via the addition of user-conjugated antibodies, providing researchers with expanding opportunities to gain multiomic readouts from human FFPE tissues.

The company intends to continuously innovate to provide enhanced resolution, performance, throughput and efficiency for the company’s existing Visium Spatial Gene Expression products. Analogous to the Chromium platform, the company also intends to develop additional Visium-based applications to allow spatial interrogation of a broader range of biological analytes, such as DNA, immune molecules, epigenetics and proteins.

Xenium Platform

The company’s Xenium platform for in situ analysis is designed to give scientists the ability to not only locate and type cells in their tissue context, but also to address a variety of specific questions based on previous knowledge of their sample often discovered using the company’s Chromium and Visium platforms.

In situ is a Latin expression that means ‘in the original place.’ In situ analysis is used to describe a method to detect and analyze RNA and protein molecules right where they are within the tissue, without the need to extract or capture them.

Based on the company’s internal research and development and the acquisitions of ReadCoor and CartaNA, the company’s Xenium platform is a complete end-to-end solution including a robust instrument, consumables and software.

The Xenium Analyzer instrument, which the company began shipping in 2022, is designed for fully automated high-throughput analysis of cells in their tissue environment. The end-to-end solution includes pre-designed, validated panels and analysis tools for visualizing and studying spatial patterns of expression.

Xenium In Situ detects and preserves the cellular localization of RNA targets directly in a fresh frozen or FFPE tissue section without the need for conventional sequencing. This provides researchers with a detailed map of gene expression patterns without sacrificing resolution or target number. Xenium uses circularizable probes specific to target transcripts followed by enzymatic amplification to create a target for fluorescent probe hybridization. On the Xenium Analyzer, microscope images of the tissue detect the location of each fluorescent probe, which is then removed. Successive rounds of fluorescent probe hybridization, imaging and removal creates a unique optical signature that reveals the identity of the RNA at a location within each cell of a tissue. In the future, the company expects that Xenium will allow the detection of both RNA and protein in the same tissue section, revealing complex and nuanced expression patterns.

The company’s Xenium consumables consist of a menu of curated, validated and fit-for-purpose gene panels along with the ability to design custom gene sets. The company’s panels include Human Breast, Human Brain, Human Lung, Human Multi-tissue, Human Colon, Human Skin, Mouse Brain and Mouse Tissue Atlassing Gene Expression Panels. The panels were designed using single cell datasets with direct customer input and the genes were chosen to target cell types and cell states for each respective tissue type. Each curated panel can also be customized with up to 100 genes. In addition, customers can purchase a fully custom panel for up to 500 genes.

The Xenium Analyzer instrument comes with onboard analysis capabilities to process image data, localize RNA signals and perform secondary analysis. Customers are able to easily transfer data from the instrument and perform visualization and further analysis with 10x-provided software or other tools of their choice.

With the launch of the company’s Xenium platform in 2022, the company introduced Xenium Explorer, an easy-to-use desktop software tool for interactive exploration and data analysis. Xenium Explorer leverages the platform's exploration-ready output to enable researchers to immediately see results at subcellular and tissue scale.

Growth Strategy

The company’s growth strategy includes the following key elements: developing critical enabling technologies; expanding sales of the company’s instruments; strengthening use and adoption of the company’s consumables; and identifying the most relevant technologies, create or acquire such technologies and develop them into new products.

Commercial

Commercial Team

Since launching the company’s first product in mid-2015, the company has expanded its commercial operations and now sells its products in over 50 countries. The company’s customers primarily include academic, government, biopharmaceutical, biotechnology and other institutions focused on life sciences research. The company sells its products primarily through its own direct sales force in North America and certain regions of Europe. As of December 31, 2023, the company’s commercial organization consisted of 450 full time employees, many with PhD degrees and many with significant industry experience. The company sells its products through third-party distributors in Asia, certain regions of Europe, Oceania, Central America, South America, the Middle East and Africa.

Commercial Strategy

The company’s products are integrated solutions consisted of instruments, consumables and software. The company’s customers primarily include academic, government, biopharmaceutical, biotechnology and other institutions. The company’s strategy typically involves targeting key opinion leaders during the initial phase of its product launches, after which the company intends to expand adoption of its products across a broader base of customers. As the company’s customer base has grown, the company has been able to sell more instruments to accelerate the adoption of new solutions.

The company’s sales and marketing efforts are targeted at the principal investigators, research scientists, department heads, research laboratory directors and core facility directors at leading academic institutions, biopharmaceutical companies and publicly and privately funded research institutions who control buying decisions.

The company also targets researchers who do not own their own 10x instrument, but who have access to one, which the company refers to as ‘halo users’. The company also provides education and training resources, both online and in person.

Suppliers and Manufacturing

Consumables

The majority of the company’s consumable products are manufactured at its facilities. These manufacturing operations include, among other operations, gel bead generation, surfactant synthesis and emulsion oil formulation, reagent formulation and tube filling, certain of the company’s microfluidic chips, kit assembly and packaging, as well as analytical and functional quality control testing.

Instruments

The company outsources manufacturing for its Chromium, Visium CytAssist and Xenium instruments to qualified contract manufacturers who have represented to the company that they maintain ISO 13485 certification. The company’s Chromium Connect includes an automated workflow liquid handling robot which is manufactured by its partner. The company performs optical and final assembly, instrument integration and testing of the company’s Xenium instrument in-house.

Intellectual Property

Worldwide the company owned or exclusively in-licensed over 970 issued or allowed patents and 1,220 pending patent applications as of December 31, 2023.

The company seeks trademark registration to protect key trademarks, such as the company’s 10X, 10X GENOMICS, CHROMIUM, VISIUM and XENIUM marks, however, the company has not yet registered all of its trademarks in all of its markets. The company owns registered trademarks on 10X GENOMICS and product related brand names in the United States and worldwide.

The patents the company owns expire beginning in 2030 and the patents the company exclusively in-licenses expire beginning in 2028.

Research and Development

The company’s research and development costs were $270.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2023.

History

The company was founded in 2012. It was incorporated in the state of Delaware in July 2012 under the name Avante Biosystems, Inc. The company changed its name to 10X Technologies, Inc. in September 2012 and to 10x Genomics, Inc. in 2014.