Newswise -- Slideflow Labs, an artificial intelligence (AI) pathology company spun out of research conducted at the University of Chicago, is advancing deployment of its cloud-based precision diagnostics platform across multiple institutions, including the University of Chicago.
Alexander T. Pearson, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine, has been working on computer vision models to predict genomic alterations directly from histology slides of tumor biopsy samples. In 2020, his team published a Nature Cancer paper showing that a single deep learning algorithm can be trained to predict a wide range of molecular alterations, gene expression signatures, and molecular subtypes from routine slides with tumor samples.
For many years, Pearson's lab has been focusing on building and training biomarkers on pathology slides for various cancers, developing methods to improve trust in the output coming from the AI models, and to correct confounding patterns that reduce accuracy.
The company's product, Slideflow Pro, is a scalable and modular platform that is designed to analyze digitized pathology slides and support the development of AI-based biomarkers that can help answer clinically important questions in cancer care.
"Our goal is to develop and deploy patient-facing biomarkers using histology samples that can answer questions in medicine that we can't answer today," said Sid Ramesh, MD'24, MS'24, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Slideflow Labs, Pritzker School of Medicine graduate, and rising medical oncology fellow at UChicago Medicine. "The first phase is to develop models and methods that are clinically impactful and can exceed the performance of highly utilized legacy tests."
Slideflow's main focus is to deploy a robust, safe, and scalable platform that was built in-house, rigorously validated, and hosted on the cloud for anyone to use. Moreover, it allows rapid integration of advanced pathology biomarker-based tests using an AI platform developed in Pearson's lab that can be deployed to any hospital across the country.
"The exciting part of Slideflow is that it was founded by UChicago trainees, Sid Ramesh and James Dolezal, and the commercialization efforts were led by trainees," Pearson said. "Since the inception, Slideflow has been making tremendous progress and is now in the deployment phase in multiple different institutions."
Slideflow's current clinical focus includes a breast cancer application designed to predict molecular subtype and recurrence risk, with the goal of helping guide decisions about adjuvant chemotherapy.
"Slideflow Labs represents the commercialization of intellectual development that has happened at the University of Chicago over the past decade," said Pearson. "It is a homegrown innovation led by faculty and trainees, and it is now moving into a deployment phase where it has the potential to benefit patients across multiple institutions."
A key feature of the Slideflow Labs platform is its emphasis on scalability. Rather than relying solely on large institutional slide-scanning infrastructure, the platform is designed to work with multiple hardware options. Slides can be scanned rapidly, uploaded to a cloud-based platform and analyzed by AI models in near real time. The Slideflow platform can also accept models built by other teams, facilitating collaboration between medical centers.
The company's approach is intended to reduce barriers to advanced diagnostics, particularly for institutions that may not have extensive machine-learning expertise or large-scale digital pathology infrastructure.
"The goal is democratization; AI should not be something only a few major companies or institutions can use," Ramesh says. "Slideflow is built so physicians, pathologists, technicians and health systems can all benefit from advanced AI capabilities in a practical and reliable way."
Award-winning developments
Slideflow Labs was recently selected for the 2026 Northwestern Medicine and Techstars Healthcare Accelerator, a three-month mentorship-driven program. Pearson highlighted that Slideflow Labs was one of only five companies chosen from nearly 1,000 applicants for its cohort. Through Techstars program, Slideflow received access to clinical expertise, commercialization support, investor networks and hands-on mentorship as it advances deployment of its AI-powered digital pathology platform across multiple institutions. The milestone provided important validation for Slideflow's approach to developing and deploying cancer biomarkers in hospital settings and supports the company's ongoing efforts to expand partnerships, strengthen clinical validation and move toward broader real-world implementation.
Slideflow Labs also achieved another major milestone to its commercialization by winning first place at the 2026 Edward L. Kaplan, '71, New Venture Challenge, the University of Chicago's premier startup competition. The company received the Rattan L. Khosa First Place Prize of $575,000 during the 30th annual NVC, where $2.1 million was awarded to finalists. The recognition underscores strong investor and entrepreneurship confidence in Slideflow's approach to AI-enabled cancer pathology and its potential to bring advanced biomarker development and deployment directly into hospital settings.
The company's next milestones include expanding deployment, validating performance across institutions and advancing regulatory pathways for clinical use. The team is also developing novel quality-control methods to ensure that AI outputs are reliable, trustworthy and appropriate for patient-facing use.
"We are focused on making sure the platform performs safely and effectively in real-world clinical environments," Pearson said. "That means validating each model, meeting regulatory requirements and building the infrastructure needed to scale across more institutions and more diagnostic applications."
Slideflow Labs' development reflects the University of Chicago's growing role in translating academic innovation into clinical and commercial impact. With ongoing deployment at leading academic medical centers and new support through Techstars, the company aims to accelerate the use of AI-powered pathology tools in precision oncology.
