Takara Bio USA Wins The Scientist’s Top Innovations Award for Spatial Mapping of FFPE Samples and Further Expands Catalog with Custom Tile Sizes

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Takara Bio USA, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Takara Bio Inc. ("Takara Bio"), today announced that its Trekker® FX Single-Cell Spatial Mapping Kit has won a 2026 “Top Innovations” Award in the Lab Research Tools category from The Scientist, a magazine dedicated to showcasing the most transformative and useful advances in life science techniques and products. Takara Bio USA has also announced the expansion of the Trekker catalog to include customizable tile sizes, enabling researchers to better accommodate a variety of sample sizes, maximize cost efficiency per experiment, increase throughput, and improve experimental design.

“With our instrument-free Trekker spatial technology, we are democratizing spatial biology, making it accessible for any lab equipped for next-generation sequencing workflows,” said Andrew Farmer, President and CEO of Takara Bio USA. “As others in the industry focus on new, expensive instrumentation that limits the accessibility of spatial biology to a select few, Takara Bio USA is advancing a platform-agnostic approach that delivers true single-cell spatial resolution with deeper biological insights. The award from The Scientist recognizes the power of this innovation which sets Trekker FX apart.”

This is the second consecutive year that Takara Bio USA has won a “Top Innovations” Award from The Scientist. In 2025, the company won this award for the Lenti-X™ T-Cell Transduction Sponge, a product featured in the Lab Research Tools category. This sponge, infused with an optimized blend of T-cell activation reagents, simplifies T-cell engineering by combining cell activation and viral transduction into a single, rapid step.

A New Class of Spatial Earns Recognition

Trekker Single-Cell Spatial Mapping Kits represent a new class of spatial technology. Trekker kits process diverse sample types to deliver high-sensitivity spatial data at true single-cell resolution. This industry-leading sensitivity has been demonstrated in a benchmark study comparing Trekker FX technology to the Visium HD and Xenium 5K platforms from 10x Genomics. Trekker FX detected genes with 10 times greater sensitivity than Visium HD and 1.5 times greater sensitivity than Xenium 5K.

The expansion of the Trekker catalog to include customizable tile sizes offers a series of benefits for researchers. Decreased tile size is suitable for smaller biopsies or needle cores, enabling researchers to avoid paying for unused tile area. Bigger tile options allow teams to map intact tissue without trimming rare clinical biobank specimens, improving large-scale spatial projects, including cell atlasing, with samples such as larger tumors or areas of human brain.

Trekker FX processes formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue samples, the most common archived tissue type. The “Top Innovations” Award from The Scientist recognizes Trekker FX technology as an easy and affordable way to acquire spatial data on FFPE samples, allowing scientists everywhere to explore cell-cell interactions, discover new cell types and niches, identify off-target effects with treatment gradients, and more.

For details about this kit visit https://www.takarabio.com/learning-centers/spatial-omics/trekker-resources

About The Scientist

The Scientist is a well-established magazine for life science professionals. Founded 40 years ago, it covers a wide range of topics central to the study of cell and molecular biology and creates educational resources and events to support its scientist readers throughout all of their endeavors. It is read by leading researchers in industry and academia who value penetrating analyses and broad perspectives on life science topics both within and beyond their areas of expertise.

About Takara Bio

Takara Bio USA, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Takara Bio Inc. that manufactures and distributes kits, reagents, and instruments for the life sciences, including NGS, PCR, gene delivery, genome editing, stem cell research, nucleic acid and protein purification, and automated sample preparation.

Takara Bio Inc., a world leader in biotechnology research and development, offers a host of life science research solutions, from enzymes and GMP-grade reagents to contracted cell and gene therapy manufacturing services and is the developer of the RetroNectin^® reagent, a world standard in gene therapy protocols. Takara Bio is committed to preventing disease and improving the quality of life for all people through the use of biotechnology.

For more information about Takara Bio USA’s spatial biology solutions, visit www.takarabio.com/spatial-solutions