Xyall Secures €6 Million Series B Financing

Xyall BV is €6 million richer, having attracted Series B funding from Health Investment Partners (HIP), Sioux Technologies, the Brabant Development Agency, and several private investors. The money will be used to commercialize its Tissector High Throughput and Tissector Table Top systems.
 
Xyall’s technology enables molecular pathology laboratories to fully automate their tumor tissue dissection workflow. It’s first solution, the Tissector High Throughput System, aimed at large molecular laboratories, was launched in 2021.  Xyall has already sold several high throughput systems to large, commercial laboratories in the United States, with the first becoming fully operational from March this year.
 
Later this year, Xyall launches its compact Tissector Table Top System for hospital-based molecular pathology laboratories. This will be unveiled in November and labs worldwide are already expressing interest.
 
While molecular diagnostics has seen advances in PCR- and next-generation sequencing technology, selecting tumor tissue and cell samples for molecular diagnostic testing has stayed a manual, labor-intensive step with a risk of error and cross contamination.
 
Current practice involves the pathologist in pen-marking Regions of Interest (ROIs) on hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stained slides. Using visual assessment, lab technicians then translate these ROIs into dissection slides, manually scraping the tissue and placing it in small containers. In addition, there is a worldwide shortage of laboratory technicians, placing workflow and sample handling pressures on clinical labs.
 
“The increase in new therapies is driving up demand for molecular diagnostic tests to inform treatment decisions for cancer patients. These tests require a consistently high sample quality and efficiency that is difficult to achieve with the current way of working,” Xyall CEO Guido du Pree explained. “Clinicians and lab scientists have been calling for faster and more accurate tissue dissection so that precision medicine could become a reality, Xyall’ s unique technology provides the missing link by delivering fully automated tissue dissection solutions which enable a more efficient, standardized and more accurate workflow.”
 
Xyall’s solutions are based on the unique technologies the company has developed in the areas of precision movement, medical robotics and image registration. It addresses the need for accuracy, speed and ease of use in an automated system to make the most efficient use of existing staffing levels.
 
‘Xyall offers a unique solution in the molecular laboratory automation space, linking morphology and molecular diagnostics. Their fully automated, digital solutions will fit seamlessly into the future direction for healthcare as it evolves around precision medicine. We are proud to play a significant role in supporting Xyall in achieving its aims,” said HIP partner Donar van den Berg.

Xyall is headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, and was founded in August 2018 by du Pree and Hans van Wijngaarden. They are both advocates of precision medicine and worked together at Philips Healthcare as part of the senior management team developing the company’s global digital pathology business.
 
Health Investment Partners (HIP) is a Dutch venture capital firm with a focus on companies with value propositions which have a sustainable impact on prevention, efficiency and quality in health care. Next to growth capital, HIP also provides hands-on support. The company’s overall objective is to play a key role to ensuring healthcare remains accessible.
 
Entrepreneurship is the driver of change. From sustainable food systems to a healthy future, climate-neutral energy solutions, and developing promising key technologies—the Brabant Development Agency (BOM) ensures that startups playing a role in these fields get off to a flying start and grow into scaleups, that the right facilities are always available to Brabant-based companies, and that companies that aspire to go global can actually do so. Over the last four years BOM has worked with more 600 companies to achieve such an impact.
 
High-tech company Sioux Technologies has its headquarters in The Netherlands, with offices in Germany and China. Its focus, together with regional and European partners (such as the Brabant Development Agency and the European Angel Fund), is to identify and then inject investment capital into the most promising technical startups. Their support not only speeds up the technological progress of innovative ideas but helps bring them to market far more quickly. With more than 750 engineers in-house, Sioux Technologies has the breadth of expertise to provide the technological expertise needed to maximize success. Sioux’s strength lies in its unique combination of high-quality competences in software, mathware, mechatronics, electronics as well as assembly.