SamanTree Medical has secured €20 million in financing from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to help support the development of an advanced confocal microscopy scanner that takes rapid images of tissue samples’ internal microstructure during surgical procedures.

The financing is backed by InvestEU, the European Union’s flagship program to mobilize more than €372 billion in additional investment from 2021 to 2027. The financing also will support SamanTree Medical’s research, development, and innovative activities, including continued development and advancement of its Histolog Scanner, the first and only medical imaging device featuring massively parallel confocal microscopy.

“The support of the European Investment Bank represents an important milestone for SamanTree,” SamanTree Medical CEO Olivier Delporte stated. “This financing allows us to accelerate development of the Histolog Scanner, expand our commercial presence across Europe and the United States. The rigorous due diligence process undertaken by the EIB reflects the importance of our technology, our development plan, and our long-term vision for advancing real-time, high-resolution imaging for excised tissue.”

The EIB financing is provided through the Bank’s Venture Debt Instrument and is designed to support innovative companies undertaking research-intensive development activities. By extending the company’s cash runway and de-risking its development plan, the financing is expected to help accelerate product development and reinforce SamanTree’s U.S. and European commercialization efforts.

“Our investment in SamanTree Medical reflects the EIB’s longstanding commitment to advancing medical innovation across Europe,” EIB Director Alessandro Izzo said. “By supporting medtech companies through venture debt—a tool that helps entrepreneurs accelerate growth and bring cutting-edge technologies to patients sooner—we make sure that key medical tech companies can grow and thrive in Europe. Supporting innovators like SamanTree Medical is central to our mission of driving positive impact for patients and healthcare systems.”

The Histolog Scanner can capture nearly 30,000 images simultaneously, rather than one at a time, producing high-resolution, histology-like images in approximately one minute without damaging the specimen. This allows surgeons and pathologists to image tissue within minutes and determine whether abnormal cellular microstructures remain at the surgical site, while patients remain on the operating table.

Used in more than 6,000 patients to date, physicians using the Histolog Scanner have demonstrated compelling results across multiple tissue types, according to SamanTree. In breast-conserving surgery, the SHIELD study showed that when physicians used the Histolog images for assessment, reoperation rates were lowered from 30% to 10%, a 67% reduction.

Research has also shown that Histolog is similar¹ when compared to intraoperative frozen-section analysis (the gold standard) for prostatectomies, while offering substantial time savings. Using Histolog for imaging and interpretation takes approximately five to 20 minutes, compared with 45-60 minutes for frozen section analysis.² Using the Histolog images, physicians have also demonstrated a sensitivity ranging from 73% to 91% and a specificity ranging from 91% to 100% when compared to conventional pathology.^3,4,5 Additionally, studies have shown that intraoperative assessment allows surgeons to opt for more nerve-sparing surgeries, significantly reducing erectile dysfunction, a common side effect of a radical prostatectomy.⁶

The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the EU’s long-term lending institution, owned by its Member States. The EIB finances investments in eight core priorities that support EU policy objectives: climate action and the environment, digitalisation and technological innovation, security and defence, cohesion, agriculture and the bioeconomy, social infrastructure, a stronger Europe in a more peaceful and prosperous world and Europe’s capital markets union.   

The InvestEU programme provides the European Union with long-term funding by leveraging substantial private and public funds in support of a sustainable recovery. It also helps to crowd in private investment for the European Union’s strategic priorities, such as the European Green Deal and the digital transition. InvestEU brings all EU financial instruments previously available for supporting investments within the European Union together under one roof, making funding for investment projects in Europe simpler, more efficient, and more flexible. The InvestEU Fund is deployed through implementing partners that will invest in projects using the EU budget guarantee of €26.2 billion. The entire budget guarantee will back the investment projects of the implementing partners, increase their risk-bearing capacity, and thus mobilize at least €372 billion in additional investment.

Headquartered in Liège, Belgium, SamanTree Medical is a privately held company striving to improve oncologic surgery through imaging solutions. Its flagship product, the Swiss-developed Histolog Scanner, enables surgeons and pathologists to visualize large, fresh tissue samples in real-time with exceptional resolution and accuracy, making it uniquely suited for intraoperative environments. Founded in 2014 based on innovations from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), a Swiss research institute renowned for engineering and technological advancements, SamanTree Medical is committed to enabling real-time fresh tissue imaging. The Histolog Scanner is CE marked in the European Union and received FDA clearance in the U.S. in 2024.

References
¹ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39403832/
² https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36440864/
³ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39403832/
⁴ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39403832/
⁵ IP8-FLUORESCE: A Prospective Paired Cohort Study Evaluating the Diagnostic Accuracy of Fluorescence Confocal Microscopy for Real-time Assessment of Surgical Margins in Radical Prostatectomy – PubMed
⁶ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(25)00091-9/fulltext