€6m · Seed · Healthtech · Ghent, Belgium
Ghent-based SpectaCell, a spinout from imec, VIB and Ghent University, has launched with €6m in Seed financing led by imec.xpand. PMV's Flanders Future Tech Fund, InnovationQuarter Capital, Qbic and VIB also participated. According to the company announcement and imec's press release, the capital will fund further development and commercialisation of SpectaCell's cell-analysis platform with pharmaceutical and biotechnology partners.
SpectaCell founding team. Image: ©imec.
From single-cell behaviour to a release decision
SpectaCell is aimed at a problem that stretches from drug discovery into manufacturing. Developers of cell therapies and T-cell engagers need to understand how immune cells behave when they meet a target, but indirect signals or sample averages can hide differences between individual cells. The company says its system combines chip-based imaging with data analysis to track thousands of live cell interactions directly, at high resolution and over time, without fluorescent labels that might affect cell behaviour.
The planned instrument uses cartridges and is designed to return results within hours rather than days. SpectaCell's current product material says a run can capture more than 10,000 cell-cell interactions and support a four-hour potency test. Those are company performance claims that still need validation in customer workflows, but they point to the commercial mechanism: faster, label-free measurements could let biopharma teams compare candidates and processes sooner, while preserving detailed evidence about how individual cells responded.
One measurement path from research to manufacturing
The company intends to use the same measurement approach from early research and process development through routine manufacturing quality checks. If customers can carry a common assay across those stages, SpectaCell could reduce the handoffs created when discovery, development and quality teams use different tests. The harder execution task is proving that results remain reproducible across therapies, sites and regulated manufacturing environments; speed matters only if the evidence is dependable enough to support high-cost development and batch-release decisions.
The financing therefore supports more than instrument development. SpectaCell says it will commercialise the platform with pharma and biotech partners, combining technology and cell-analysis work in Ghent with further validation and application in Leiden. That partner-led route gives the newly launched company access to real development programmes, where it can test whether a single analytical workflow can travel from candidate selection to production quality control.
Sources checked:
SpectaCell company announcement · imec press release · VIB press release · EU-Startups reporting · Tech.eu Funding Explorer
