Seattle-based Alpenglow Biosciences kicked off a $24 million effort to commercialize its open-top lightsheet imaging platform and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven 3D spatial biology for surgical oncology, prostate cancer diagnostics, and direct-to-digital tissue imaging and analysis.
Alpenglow's co-founder Dr. Jonathan T.C. Liu from the University of Washington was awarded an up to $21 million five-year contract, the company announced. The company's contract is one of several Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)-funded projects announced this week.
Boosted by the ARPA-H grant, Alpenglow and its partners will develop a microscopy system that, if successful, will allow surgeons to image the entire surface of a tumor by placing it on a lightsheet scanner. The team is also developing algorithms to "pseudo-stain the resulting images" and render them like conventional pathology images, according to ARPA-H.
Additionally, a $2 million phase II small business innovation research (SBIR) contract from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will support Alpenglow's existing collaboration with CorePlus, a digital pathology laboratory based in Puerto Rico, Alpenglow said. The money supports development of 3D pathology AI assays using prostate core biopsies and leveraging the company's 3D microscopy data.
Furthermore, Alpenglow said that it received $1 million in additional investment led by Dynamk Capital and Paul McEwan to further develop its Aurora platform for rapid tissue imaging and AI-driven analysis.
Alpenglow Biosciences was established in 2018.
