VIB recently hosted its inaugural Spatial Omics conference in the field of spatial omics technologies, a rapidly emerging discipline that has seen significant advancements in recent years. Over 430 attendees gathered at the scenic Bijloke site in historical Ghent for two days of presentations and discussions on the latest discoveries in spatial biology.
The conference featured keynote addresses from leading pioneers such as Matthias Mann and Joakim Lundeberg. Their presentations set the stage for an exciting exchange of ideas as they were joined by new and upcoming researchers from both industry and academia.
In addition to the headline speakers, junior scientists had the opportunity to showcase their work through poster pitches and poster sessions, fostering a collaborative atmosphere that spurred many fruitful discussions before, during, and after the talks. Check out our X account to see the poster video pitches of Nikolai Hecker, Sanne Verheul, and Qirong Mao.
The event was not only a testament to the growing importance of spatial omics technologies but also an inspiring display of the vibrant scientific community's commitment to advancing knowledge in this cutting-edge field.
OC member Evelien Van Hamme, who leads VIB's Spatial Catalyst team, described it as follows, "It was a very nice conference. I enjoyed it a lot. There were very nice speakers and a big audience, which led to a very nice vibe." OC member Wai Long, Tam Head of Technology Watch at VIB, added, "you could really speak to a lot of vendors, scientists working in spatial biology. So it was a fantastic opportunity to network and really learn everything about spatial biology."
Our intrepid conference photographer took a lot of photos, which you can see here.
Insights from the conference reporters
During the conference, several reporters live-posted on social media. The #SpatialOmics24 reporters were An Staes (Head Mass spec engineer at VIB Proteomics Core), Tine Tricot (Program Manager at VIB-KU Leuven Center of Cancer Biology), Stebastiaan Vanuytven (Postdoctoral Researcher at ULB), and Kevin Titeca (Post-doctoral researcher at EMBL).
Below are some of their impressions of the conference.
An: Spatial Omics 2024 was a two day experience consisting of excellent speakers presenting tons of data. While the transcriptomics and epigenomics fields have already matured to a comprehensive understanding of tumors, the proteomics field is still taking babysteps, nicely stated by the legend in proteomics, Mathias Mann: “it takes a village to perform deep visual proteomics”. Will the proteomics field confirm what the other omics already have consensus about on how a tumor is build? Curious what the future will bring.
With the state-of-the art technologies showcased during the meeting, the focus was on supporting the pathologists, the superheroes, providing them with even more superpowers. We are almost ready for diagnosis through spatial omics. There seems to be a consensus on what all omics combined need to be able to do: analyze all different omics on one and the same slice of tissue. Only then we will be able to put everything together about that particular section of the tumor.
While focusing on technology Min Wei showecased his creativity in combining the things we know. In an exquisite talk he showed he was able to measure 200 different labels in Raman spectroscopy by combining different tags. How the scientist becomes an artist!
As a keynote speaker Itai Yanai took us on a trip along the developmental evolution of a tumor, which is very much related to the developmental evolution of cells in general. The different tumor cell types always follow the tree of developmental evolution, a conclusion to keep in mind. Next to this he nicely showed that the adaptation of a tumor to therapy is not just the switch from one to another state, it is rather a continuum and an evolutional like process. In short, tumor cells go back to basics.
Tine: The SpatialOmics24 conference provided an great overview of both the latest and upcoming advances in spatial multiomics and data integration. It provided the perfect balance between highlighting cutting-edge technology and demonstrating its impact on fundamental biomedical research, as well as its translational applications, such as in for example surgical settings.
The conference showcased the potential of spatial omics and offered valuable insights into the remaining challenges within the field, highlighted the areas needing further improvement.
Sebastiaan: Attending the spatial omics conference for the first time, I was amazed by the incredible science presented in both the talks and posters. As a computational biologist, I particularly enjoyed the computational section. Prof. Sifrim gave an insightful primer into his group's research on using deep learning and AI to integrate data modalities, emphasizing the need for gold-standard (pathologist) annotations. Prof. Shu showcased the potential of non-standard imaging analysis, such as Raman microscopy, and the prediction of transcriptomic data from histology images. Most importantly, he addressed a critical gap in our single-cell and spatial omics analyses: translating our UMAP or t-SNE spots back to cellular images.
Marc Claesen of Aspect Analytics introduced us to their secure Weave software, which can integrate an unlimited number of spatial layers and has already been used in both pharmaceutical and academic research.
The experience was further enhanced by outstanding keynotes from Prof. Fan, considered one of the godfathers of spatial multi-omics, Prof. Lundeberg, the pioneer of sequencing-based spatial omics, and Prof. Bayraktar, who combined spatial omics with a remarkable dataset to tackle glioblastoma in unprecedented detail. This created an amazing first day.
On day two, I was blown away by Prof. Brian Brown's talk. When I started my master's thesis back in 2015, CRISPR-Cas9 was just emerging, and now he has already developed in-vivo screens to address tumor immunology. It was fascinating to see the potential synergy between immunotherapy and standard FDA-approved psoriasis therapy, uncovered through their methods.
Overall, I highly recommend this conference to every researcher for the next edition. Even if your research currently has no or limited spatial omics, the methods, protocols, and tools discussed here will be driving research for years to come. As Prof. Yanai suggested, this field might even challenge long-held scientific dogmas. Stay tuned!
Kevin: "The first edition of this spatial omics conference was immediately a great success. The organizers clearly managed to bring together a diverse set of speakers and viewpoints from this fast evolving field, from many innovative new-comers to early pioneers further pushing the field forward, like Joakim Lundeberg and Rong Fan. The conference provided a nice blend of technology development and its applications. With also the vendors not only supplying resources, but actively contributing in both.
Many presentations were inspiring, like the one from Itai Yanai with his concept of “night science”. Straightforward but elegant thought experiments resulted in deep biological insights into the journey that cancer cells take toward drug resistance. Spatial omics is evidently accelerating research in several traditionally challenging study areas, such as the brain and cancer. Moreover, various researchers, including Nathalie Agar, began to build the much-needed bridges to instant clinical application. The conference organizers clearly cared about the opportunities for discussion and speaker accessibility during presentations and poster sessions, as well as afterward. Several speakers also focused on accessibility in their talks, with e.g. Nikolay Samusik enabling democratization of scalable automation in spatial biology. The diverse set of great scientists, topics, and backgrounds made this conference ideal for the scientific cross-pollination of ideas.
The conference nicely illustrated that this field is rapidly moving its scientific boundaries. I particularly loved the focus of several groups on subcellular omics: Jung-Chi Liao’s work on the specific isolation of cell parts for instance, and Sinem Saka’s use of DNA-based labeling tools to connect visual phenotypes with cell states. It was also interesting to see that my previous research area was now also brought into the realm of spatial biology, as Doroteya Raykova described spatial protein interactomics. The challenge of multiplex detection of biological targets is being rapidly addressed, even in traditionally more difficult fields like proteomics. Mass spectrometry imaging rightfully starts to get more attention in this context. Wei Min introduced highly multiplex imaging using probes for Raman spectroscopy, and Matthias Mann reported astonishing numbers of detectable proteins from mass spectrometry on single cells. Moreover, many research groups described multiplex detection of different types of molecules. Lastly, many researchers explored spatial heterogeneity (e.g. Josephine Bunch, Omer Bayraktar, and Charlotte Scott). Shawn Davidson even discovered, using isotope labeling, that different tissues often prefer distinct metabolic pathways to synthesize the same metabolites.
In summary, an excellent conference. See you hopefully in the next one!
If you want more coverage, you can check the SpatialOmics24 conference posts on LinkedIn and X or check the stories' highlights on our Instagram page.
The future of spatial biology
With the success of this first edition behind us, we eagerly anticipate the new developments in this field. We hope this conference has played a role in stimulating further progress.
OC member Evelien articulated it aptly: "When you work in science, you're confronted with problems. And sometimes, you feel that you have to solve them all by yourself. And then when you go to conferences, you can discuss them with people, and you get motivated again. You always go home completely excited, and you want to start working with the new ideas you've gotten. So conferences are really essential."
For more insights into how VIB is advancing this field, be sure to read their recent blog article.
