SamanTree Medical has received a €20m ($23.7m) grant from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to advance the commercial presence of its digital microscopy scanner throughout the US and Europe.
The Belgian company’s Histolog Scanner gained a European CE mark in 2018 and US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance in September 2024. The confocal microscopy scanner is used to image excised tissue samples during surgical procedures.
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According to SamanTree, Histolog is capable of capturing almost 30,000 images simultaneously to produce high-resolution ‘histology-like’ images in around one minute, without damaging a tissue sample. This capability is designed to aid surgeons and pathologists in determining whether abnormal cellular microstructures, such as cancerous cells, remain at a surgical site during a procedure.
The system has particular application in oncologic surgical procedures. In SamanTree’s SHIELD study, by using Histolog during breast-conserving surgery, reoperation rates were lowered from the historical control of 30% to 10%, corresponding to a 67% reduction.
Further studies have revealed that by using Histolog’s images, physicians have demonstrated a sensitivity from 73% to 91% and a specificity ranging from 91% to 100% in tumour margin assessment in radical prostatectomy (RP) as compared to conventional pathology.
SamanTree CEO Olivier Delporte commented: “This financing allows us to accelerate development of the Histolog Scanner and expand our commercial presence across Europe and the US.”
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By GlobalDataFunds from the EIB come as part of InvestEU, a European Commission (EC) programme that aims to allocate over €372bn in investment tranches between 2021 and 2027 for initiatives focused on research, innovation and digitisation, sustainable infrastructure, SMEs, and social investment and skills.
EIB director Alessandro Izzo commented: “Supporting innovators like SamanTree Medical is central to our mission of driving positive impact for patients and healthcare systems.”
The EC has several other funding initiatives in play that support EU healthcare companies via the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) EIB fund. These include Med4Cure, a €1bn ($1.16bn) public funding pool created for healthcare innovation projects in the EU. Earlier this month, FineHeart, a French company developing an implantable cardiac output accelerator for advanced heart failure treatment, received €48m ($55.8m) from this funding programme.
