SPIM microscopy tech developer Luxendo receives over $8.5M in Series A funding

European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL; Heidelberg, Germany) startup Luxendo (also in Heidelberg), which is developing single-plane illumination microscopy (SPIM) technology for biomedical research, has raised a total of over $8.5 million (€8 million) in Series A funding. The company will use these funds to drive international sales of its SPIM instrumentation by expanding its international sales and marketing team, as well as invest in the production capacity needed to support its growth.

The company's SPIM technology is a fluorescence microscopy technique combined with a high optical resolution, in which only a 1–3 µm slice of the fluorescent sample is illuminated. Therefore, it highly reduces the photodamage and stress induced on a living sample that could occur with conventional laser scanning confocal microscopes.

The company launched its Mu-VI and In-Vi SPIM microscopes in 2016, both of which are based on the SPIM technology. This technology allows scientists to observe living organisms for extended periods of time without them being adversely impacted by phototoxicity. Its microscopes are able to avoid sample phototoxicity by sequentially illuminating a stack of small slices of the organism that is actively being viewed.

The MuVi-SPIM microscope, equipped with two scientific CMOS (sCMOS) cameras, provides ultrafast 3D imaging (up to 140 frames/s at 512 × 2000 pixels) without the need of sample rotation. The InVi-SPIM microscope, equipped with an inverted optical setup, allows extremely gentle specimen handling and is therefore dedicated to cell culture and early embryonic development imaging.

Luxendo plans to introduce a new instrument for quantitative fluorescence imaging, which is in its final development phase, in 2017.

For more information, please visit http://luxendo.eu.