“If you look at the analysis of a tumor as a puzzle, most techniques only bring one or a few pieces to the table,” says Marc Claesen, CEO and co-founder. “For example, one method may map the genetic code, while another technique focuses on protein expression. We, however, bring all relevant data together and spatially image it.”

Pharmaceutical companies such as GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim are already using Aspect Analytics’ technology. The same goes for several companies active in diagnostics, as well as numerous universities, including KU Leuven and UHasselt in Flanders and Vanderbilt University in the US.

Cancer experts estimate that technology like that of Aspect Analytics is still in its infancy, but holds the promise of better cancer diagnoses and therefore more targeted treatments. 

“The advantage of spatial multidose technology is that you can paint a much more realistic and fine-grained picture of tumors per patient, because with this technique the cells are examined in their original spatial context in the tissue,” says Professor Johan Van Lint, coordinator of cancer research at the Leuven Cancer Institute.