A multi‑institution initiative led by St. Jude, Weill Cornell Medicine and the University of Adelaide published best practices, SOPs, quality metrics and an open reference dataset for imaging‑based spatial transcriptomics in Nature Biotechnology. The Spatial Touchstone project generated high‑quality FFPE spatial data covering more than 8 million cells across tissues and platforms. Researchers benchmarked runs on both 10x Genomics Xenium and Bruker CosMx SMI, released an open‑source quality‑metric software suite and launched a web portal for run assessment. The effort aims to standardize workflows and reduce variability in spatial assays used increasingly across discovery and translational pipelines. Spatial transcriptomics maps gene expression to histological context; standardized benchmarks will help researchers and CROs compare datasets, validate assays, and improve reproducibility for drug target discovery and pathology applications.