Robotic Microscope Could Accelerate Drug Discovery

San Francisco startup 3Scan Inc. has raised $14 million in venture funding to “automate tissue analysis for scientists involved in drug discovery,” according to TechCrunch. 3Scan’s patented “Knife Edge Scanning Microscope” (KESM) utilizes “a novel serial sectioning technique to create three dimensional models of tissue biology” according to the company’s website. The “cutting edge technology” of the microscope is also capable of sectioning and imaging samples.

But what does this all mean?

According to the company’s co-founder, Megan Klimen, this means scientists will have “a better view and more comprehensive data set from any given tissue sample than they have ever had before,” again according to TechCrunch. 

While robotics and software in warehouses and other fields is nothing new, pathology has remained relatively unchanged since the 1800s. The current process scientists must go through to examine diseased tissue does not only involved multiple steps, but also yeilds a small amount of available samples, causing researchers to come to conclusions based on the limited data they are able to extract from those samples. 

3Scan’s robotic microscope system allows up to 10,000 slices to be derived from each tissue sample. It then uses machine vision to generate a digital, three-dimensional spatial map “which researchers can review and explore on a screen, something like a topographical map of the Earth.” (TechCrunch)

This technology not only enables researchers to examine aspects of tissue that were previously unseen, it is also so efficient that it can perform a year’s worth of tissue sample analysis in one day. This technology is currently being utilized to advance the fields of basic reserach, pre-clinical drug discovery, and clinical diagnostics.