EIC Accelerator Check: Diapath and Its Fast Tissue Processor

Before a pathologist can look at a biopsy under a microscope, the tissue has to be fixed, dehydrated, cleared and soaked in paraffin wax, a sequence of chemical baths that machines called tissue processors run overnight. Diapath, a maker of pathology lab equipment in Martinengo near Bergamo, told the European Commission in 2019 that current processors "take up to 24 hours" and leave operators exposed to chemicals, and that its own machine, Origin, would need fewer steps and fewer chemicals, according to CORDIS.

The Commission's list of winners of the 9 October 2019 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot names Diapath SpA, Martinengo (BG), for Origin with blended finance, a grant plus a possible equity investment. It is the project's only row in the list, so Diapath had no partner company. The grant agreement was signed on 26 March 2020 for a €3,613,075 project with an EU contribution of €1,975,712.38, running from 1 April 2020 to 31 December 2024. Nearly two years after the project closed, no Origin product has been launched, and Diapath now belongs to the American group StatLab, which Leica Biosystems, a Danaher company, bought on 28 September 2026.

Where Diapath Stands Now

Diapath is active, but no longer independent. On 28 August 2024 StatLab Medical Products, a pathology supplier from McKinney, Texas, owned by the private equity firms Linden Capital Partners and Audax Private Equity, announced a definitive agreement to acquire Diapath, with closing expected in the third quarter of 2024; no financial terms were disclosed, according to Dallas Innovates and Pathology in Practice. The exact closing date has not been published, but the September 2025 launch release describes the deal as StatLab's 2024 acquisition of Diapath, and the Diapath website now calls the firm "a StatLab Company". Founder Vladimiro Bergamini became a senior adviser and chief operating officer Alberto Battistel took over the business unit as managing director.

Since then Diapath has served as StatLab's European base. In August 2025 StatLab and Diapath bought out the remaining stakes in Histoserve GmbH near Hannover, in which Diapath had taken a majority in 2021, and in Diapath France SAS, a 2023 joint venture, according to Dallas Innovates and PrivSource. In September 2025 StatLab launched three Diapath instruments in the United States, the Donatello tissue processor, the Galileo microtome and the Dante embedding centre, according to the launch release reprinted by 01net and reported by Dallas Innovates. Origin was not among them. The Diapath site lists a StatLab Group stand at the European Congress of Pathology in Stockholm in September 2026.

The ownership changed again this autumn. Leica Biosystems announced its agreement to buy StatLab on 17 July 2026, according to SelectScience, and completed the deal on 28 September 2026, according to News-Medical and Pulse 2.0. Neither announcement mentions Diapath by name. The Italian register still lists Diapath S.p.A. as active, according to aziende.it.

The Technology: Fewer Baths, Spinning Samples

A conventional processor moves cassettes of tissue through a row of reagents: formalin to fix the tissue, graded alcohols to remove water, xylene or a substitute to clear the alcohol, and molten paraffin to infiltrate it. Each reagent sits in its own tank and has to be replaced, which is where the chemical exposure, cross-contamination and plastic packaging that Diapath described in its proposal come from. Diapath's own current processor, the Donatello, works this way: StatLab's product page lists 12 reagent tanks, up to 420 cassettes per run and validated reagents including formalin, alcohol and xylene.

Origin was meant to break with that design. The Phase 1 feasibility report from 2019 says "only paraffin and formalin will be used", with infiltration "designed to eliminate the number and volume of reagents" such as alcohol and xylene, failure-prediction software based on machine learning, and capacity to "process in 30 minutes up to 600 samples". A later Diapath patent, filed in Italy on 29 October 2021 and extended as WO2023073556, EP4423478 and US20250237584, describes rotating each sample on its own axis inside a reagent container at 50 to 5,000 revolutions per minute, which processes samples individually to avoid cross-contamination and takes about 90 minutes for a 3 mm sample. The 30-minute claim of the Phase 1 report and the 90 minutes in the patent are not directly comparable, and no independent test of either has been published.

What Origin Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

Diapath came to the EIC Accelerator through the SME Instrument. Its Phase 1 project, also called Origin, received €50,000 for a feasibility study from May to August 2019 and laid out a 24-month technical plan and 12 months of clinical validation "in five European reference hospitals". The Phase 2 proposal promised that Origin would raise Diapath's market share to 30%, lift turnover to €60 million by 2023 and create 29 jobs. The project itself ran for 57 months, until 31 December 2024.

The public record of those 57 months is thin. The CORDIS report is labelled period 2, covering 1 April 2021 to 31 December 2024, yet its account of the work begins "During this first year" and describes theoretical groundwork and "the construction of a prototype". It reports no clinical validation, no hospital names, no certification and no launch date. The results page lists five patent applications filed between 2019 and 2023 and three ORIGIN trademark filings from October 2019 and January 2020, and no publications.

1. Validate Origin beyond the prototype, including tests in hospitalsNot shownThe CORDIS report describes prototype work only; no hospital results are public.
2. Bring Origin to the European and international marketsNot deliveredNo launch by Diapath or StatLab; the processors on sale are the Donatello series.
3. Turnover of €60M by 2023MissedRevenue was €28.6M in 2023, per Top Aziende and aziende.it.
4. 29 new jobsNot attributableStaff rose from 97 to 153, but without Origin sales the growth cannot be tied to the project.
5. Protect the technologyDeliveredPatent family with WO, EP and US filings; ORIGIN trademarks filed.

A grant pays for development, and the patents show the work produced something. But the core promise was a machine on the market, and neither Diapath nor StatLab has announced one. Under this series' rule that an unannounced milestone counts as not delivered, the project falls in that category.

The Money

The company around the project did well. Diapath's revenue rose from €18.08 million in 2019 to €31.62 million in 2024, with a profit every year between €1.43 million and €2.23 million, according to filed accounts collected by Top Aziende; aziende.it reports the same 2023 and 2024 figures. For 2025, the first full year under StatLab, aziende.it reports revenue of €36.37 million, up 15.0%, and a net loss of €3.88 million, with 153 employees against 144 a year earlier. Top Aziende gives 141 employees without stating the year. Neither source explains the 2025 loss.

Why Europe Should Care

Cutting chemical exposure in pathology labs is an EU policy issue. Directive (EU) 2019/983 set a binding workplace limit for formaldehyde of 0.37 mg/m³ (0.3 ppm), with a five-year transition at 0.62 mg/m³ (0.5 ppm) for the healthcare sector, according to the German Society of Pathology (DGP) and Trace One. Origin would still have used formalin, but cutting out alcohol and xylene baths fits the same goal. Diapath also joined the EIC's greenhouse gas programme for beneficiaries, according to its news page.

The ownership story points the other way on strategic autonomy. An Italian maker of core histology instruments funded by the EU is now part of Leica Biosystems, owned by Danaher of the United States. Its instruments are still "designed and developed in Italy", StatLab says, but decisions about whether Origin ever reaches the market now sit outside Europe.

The Verdict

Diapath, StatLab and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.