Xyall secures €6 million Series B financing to spearhead commercialization of its automated tissue dissector
Xyall, a global innovator in molecular pathology, has attracted a Series B investment of €6 million to accelerate commercialization of its Tissector High Throughput and Tissector Table Top systems.
The funding comes from a consortium led by Health Investment Partners (HIP). Also participating are existing investors Sioux Technologies, the Brabant Development Agency and several private investors.
Xyall’s technology enables molecular pathology laboratories to fully automate their tumour tissue dissection workflow. It’s first solution, the Tissector High Throughput System, aimed at large molecular laboratories, was launched in 2021. Xyall has already sold several high throughput systems to large, commercial laboratories in the United States, with the first becoming fully operational from March this year.
Later this year, Xyall will launch its compact Tissector Table Top System for hospital-based molecular pathology laboratories. This will be unveiled in November this year at the Annual Molecular Pathology (AMP) meeting in Phoenix, USA, with labs worldwide already expressing interest.
While molecular diagnostics has seen advances in PCR- and next-generation sequencing technology, selecting tumour tissue and cell samples for molecular diagnostic testing has stayed a manual, labour-intensive step with a risk of error and cross contamination.
Current practice involves the pathologist in pen-marking Regions of Interest (ROIs) on hematoxylin & eosin (H&E) stained slides. Using visual assessment, lab technicians then translate these ROIs into dissection slides, manually scraping the tissue and placing it in small containers. In addition, there is a worldwide shortage of laboratory technicians, placing workflow and sample handling pressures on clinical labs.
Guido du Pree, Xyall’s CEO, explained: “The increase in new therapies is driving up demand for molecular diagnostic tests to inform treatment decisions for cancer patients. These tests require a consistently high sample quality and efficiency that is difficult to achieve with the current way of working.
“Clinicians and lab scientists have been calling for faster and more accurate tissue dissection so that precision medicine could become a reality. Xyall’ s unique technology provides the missing link by delivering fully automated tissue dissection solutions which enable a more efficient, standardized and more accurate workflow.”
Xyall’s solutions are based on the unique technologies the company has developed in the areas of precision movement, medical robotics and image registration. It addresses the need for accuracy, speed and ease of use in an automated system to make the most efficient use of existing staffing levels.
