Coronal view of a mouse brain, 3Scan
This post has been updated with information from a press statement July 11
Tissue analytics start-up 3scan has raised $14 million in Series B financing. Proceeds will be used to enhance its automated pathology system and increase its market presence.
“Our immediate goal is to improve our software platform and expand our place in the pre-clinical drug discovery market,” noted COO and co-founder Megan Klimen.
Led by previous investors Lux Capital and Data Collective, the round also included Dolby Family Ventures, the OS Fund, Comet Labs, and Breakout Ventures.
To get a read on diseased tissue, pathologists and researchers manually cut thin slices and then stain and analyze them under a microscope – much as their predecessors have done for more than 150 years.
“It’s humans doing very delicate work that humans aren’t good at,” said Klimen.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The company’s robotic system automates the slicing and images the sections as they are cut with a diamond knife. The machine leverages the diamond’s optical qualities to light up each slice, producing microscopic resolution.
According to Klimen, the system offers a number of advantages. Because they are stacked and aligned, the 2D images can be rendered in 3D. Perhaps most importantly, the system is fast.
“One of our machines can cut the same number of samples in a day as a human pathologist could do in a year,” said Klimen.
The process is data-intensive, producing terabytes of information, driving the need for advanced analytical software. The digitized pathology information could accelerate drug discovery, provide better population data and enhance the ability to characterize cancer and other diseases.
“Instead of taking five or 20 sections and making assumptions based on those few, now we’re taking 10,000 sections,” said Klimen. “We can look at 200 tumor samples and quantify how the vasculature changes before and after a therapeutic. There are all these diseases that emerge at the tissue scale, but we had no way of digitizing the information and using the power of modern computers.”
Klimen contends their approach dovetails well with molecular pathology, as micro-sectioning tumors could reveal much more about their genetic heterogeneity. Though the company has long-term plans to put their technology in hospital labs, they are now moving into early-stage drug research and have set up pilot projects with a small group of pharma companies.
“Cutting time and getting more accurate results generates massive downstream effects,” said Klimen. “You’re not wasting your time on therapeutics that aren’t going to work because you did poor sampling. Or you were only able to take ten sections from each tumor and you missed that the vasculature was branching differently.”
Though 3scan still has technological and regulatory issues to overcome before entering the clinical market, the company sees enormous potential for their automated system in drug discovery.
“We’re excited that we can help get drugs on the market that will save lives sooner.”
