BILLERICA, MA — Bruker acquired Luxendo, a privately held spin-off of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) that develops and manufactures proprietary light-sheet fluorescence microscopy instruments.

Luxendo’s proprietary single plane illumination microscopy (SPIM) technique significantly reduces sampling times over conventional laser scanning confocal microscopes, while reducing phototoxicity and damaging side effects on living specimens. This SPIM technology also enables the fastest scan speeds for volumetric imaging of small organisms, cell monolayers, and cleared tissue. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, Luxendo was founded in September 2015. Under the technical leadership of Dr. Lars Hufnagel, group leader of the EMBL cell biology and biophysics unit, Luxendo was able to rapidly develop robust product solutions based on the patented SPIM technology. The SPIM microscopes significantly enhance Bruker’s existing portfolio of swept-field confocal, super-resolution, and multiphoton fluorescence microscope product lines, enabling new research advances in small organism embryology, live-cell imaging, brain development and cleared brain tissue, and optogenetics applications. This acquisition is another important step forward in Bruker’s portfolio transformation.

“With its strong IP position and unique SPIM technology, Luxendo has quickly established itself in the light-sheet microscopy market, particularly in Europe,” said Mark R. Munch, president of the Bruker NANO Group. “Similar to our recent acquisition in super-resolution microscopy, the new capabilities provide valuable application synergies to our current suite of instruments, and we feel that we can take the business to the next level in both global market reach and next-generation development, which should greatly benefit our life sciences research customers.”

“Light-sheet microscopy is revolutionizing bioimaging, and Luxendo has had an influential role in the adoption of this type of imaging in an ever-growing variety of live-sample studies,” added Andreas Pfuhl, CEO of Luxendo. “We feel that our history with EMBL has given us unique insights into what bioimaging researchers need both right now and in the near future. We are very gratified to join an internationally esteemed instrumentation company like Bruker, whose philosophy, culture and reputation so closely align with our research-oriented goals.”

“It has been very rewarding to witness the rapid trajectory from pioneering technology developed at EMBL to Luxendo’s well-designed, robust microscopes, and now this acquisition,” said EMBL Director General Iain Mattaj. “We anticipate that Bruker, with its excellent reputation in providing innovative technology, will make SPIM even more widely available. It will be truly exciting to see what the larger biological research community will discover with light-sheet microscopy.”

For more information, visit www.embl.org.