Pathology

Stain-free and section-free histology
For cancer diagnosis

The diagnosis of cancer and numerous other diseases is based on histological examination of the microstructure and cellular organization of tissue. However, before a reliable and accurate diagnosis can be made, suspicious tissue must be removed, sectioned, and stained with hematoxylin & eosin (H&E) to provide the pathologist with a detailed view of cell morphology. This process takes from 45 minutes to several days and prevents rapid diagnosis.  As a result, medical procedures are prolonged, and costs are driven up. For example, an average of 12% of breast cancer surgeries must be repeated because not all cancer cells could be detected and removed during the first surgery.

Intraoperative histology within minutes

Refined Lasers offers a novel technology for stain-free tissue diagnostics within minutes. Based on a stain-free yet molecular-specific microscope, our histology solution delivers tissue images with H&E-equivalent contrast from freshly excised, thick specimens. Without the need for time-consuming staining or sectioning, our solution allows minimizing the time required for a reliable diagnosis to just a few minutes.

  • No sample preparation
  • No sectioning
  • No staining

H&E image of breast cancer tissue.

We are working on integrating our technology for use in surgery rooms and pathology labs. The fully automated systems will provide digital H&E images of whole tissue samples during surgery with maximum ease of use. Minimizing the time required to produce an H&E image will enable rapid diagnosis and feedback loops between pathologists and surgeons via a digital connection. Identifying and diagnosing cancerous tissue directly during surgery will aid the surgeon in complete and accurate removal of cancerous tissue and avoid repeat surgeries. A cloud-based and AI-powered algorithm will help pathologists make decisions under time-critical conditions.

Beyond virtual H&E staining

Refined Laser’s proprietary technology allows imaging the molecular composition of tissue based on its intrinsic molecular-vibrational signatures. It opens a new access to a tumor and its microenvironment to determine the interaction of tumor cells with the body’s immune system. Refined Laser’s imaging technology provides a detailed, label-free, and multispectral view of the microenvironment. It allows the identification of spatial phenotypic signatures of healthy and cancerous tissue. Our goal is to harness these spatial signatures as a new class of biomarkers to unravel spatial cell interactions, predict disease progression and therapy response. In cancer treatment, this will enable more effective therapy choices to improve patients‘ well-being while reducing costs. In pharmaceutical research, this will enable optimization of drug candidates by quantifying their impact on tumor disease progression and by more efficient patient stratification for clinical drug studies.

We are looking for clinical partners
Contact us if you want to know more