Zeiss and Alpenglow Biosciences develop 3D pathology platform

14 May 2025

Light-sheet microscopy and AI offer more accurate treatment recommendations.

A partnership between Zeiss and Alpenglow Biosciences has been created to develop new light-sheet microscopy (LSM) implementations for clinical applications.

The goal is to leverage enhanced imaging and advances in AI to transform patient care, through more accurate treatment recommendations.

Light-sheet microscopy research at Zeiss has created a number of instrumental platforms, including the current Lattice Lightsheet 7 device. This incorporates a proprietary technology designed to alter the exact angle of the light sheet upwards and downwards during image acquisition, to tackle the problem of shadows cast along the illumination axis.

The platform's super-resolution capability has contributed to several LSM advances in bioimaging and healthcare, as well as presenting new views of organic systems. It was shortlisted for the German Future Prize in 2022.

Alpenglow Biosciences is a 3D spatial biology company focused on accelerating drug development and improving clinical diagnostics with AI-enabled 3D imaging technology.

Spun out from the University of Washington in 2018, and until 2022 known as LightSpeed Microscopy, the company's initial product was an open-top light-sheet microscope technology designed to scan tissue and tumor samples more rapidly.

In 2024 Alpenglow was awarded a five-year $21-million contract from Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) and a separate $2 million Small Business Innovation Research contract from the National Institutes of Health, for research related to cancer diagnosis and precise tumor removal. The company described the two awards as marking "a key inflection point" for Alpenglow Biosciences.

Clinically impactful insights

"Partnering with Zeiss represents a significant step forward in our mission to revolutionize pathology by extracting and analyzing the wealth of information contained in every single cell of a biopsy, rather than relying on just a small fraction of the tissue," said Nicholas Reder, Alpenglow Biosciences CEO.

The goal of the new collaboration is to create an integrated solution for analyzing entire tissue samples and improving reproducibility, to meet the evolving needs of both translational research and clinical settings. This would enable researchers and clinicians to gain deeper insights into tissue and cellular structures with greater efficiency and precision, ultimately facilitating more personalized and effective treatments.

The partnership will create "the fastest whole tissue imaging solution," noted Zeiss, by combining the company's arivis software analysis platform with Alpenglow’s innovative data processing and AI capabilities. Once imaged, a GPU-accelerated imaging analytics pipeline could allow users to go from tissue to clinically impactful insights faster than traditional pathology workflows.

This could then be valuable in enhanced 3D pathology workflow, translational research studying disease biology and characterization of novel biomarkers, drug development, and AI-enabled clinical decision support.

"The generation of 3D images from entire tissues provides the perfect substrate for AI to make individualized treatment predictions for patients," commented Michael Albiez of Zeiss Research Microscopy Solutions. "Ultimately these innovative technologies will deliver tools that streamline pathology workflows and enable earlier, more accurate clinical decision-making."