diff --git a/apis/python/src/tiledbsoma/io/ingest.py b/apis/python/src/tiledbsoma/io/ingest.py
index 34e5dfbfc0..27103f4218 100644
--- a/apis/python/src/tiledbsoma/io/ingest.py
+++ b/apis/python/src/tiledbsoma/io/ingest.py
@@ -2301,7 +2301,7 @@ def _coo_to_table(
     if sp.isspmatrix_csc(matrix):
         # E.g. if we used anndata.X[:]
         stride_axis = 1
-    if isinstance(matrix, SparseDataset) and matrix.format_str == "csc":
+    if isinstance(matrix, SparseDataset) and matrix.format == "csc":
         # E.g. if we used anndata.X without the [:]
         stride_axis = 1