MicrofluidX raised £1.4m in seed funding from UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S), Longwall Ventures, and Moulton Goodies Ltd., with angel contributions from 88 Capital and Cambridge Angels. The company plans to develop its cell bioprocessing technology, utilizing microfluidics to address the challenges associated with bioprocessing for cell and gene therapy.
The company’s technology facilitates process development by running dozens of cell culture conditions in parallel with process control and enables scaleup to several billion cells for manufacturing, according to Antoine Espinet, founder and CEO. The funding will enable the company to build a working prototype that can be used to generate comparative biological data between this new platform and conventional single-use technologies, he adds.
“We are thrilled to close this initial funding round with help from UKI2S. We are continuing to establish partnerships with biotech and pharma, on top of our existing partnerships with the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult and the Centre for Process Innovation,” he said. The funding will be used to further develop our technology, as well as fund trials with our partners.”
“There is a clear unmet need in cell and gene therapy manufacturing,” noted Pablo Lubroth, investment manager at UK12S. “The key issues such as cost-of-goods, batch variability and scalability can all be addressed using MicrofluidX technology. The downstream effects of solving these manufacturing problems will lead to cheaper advanced therapeutics and faster manufacturing timelines and in turn increase the adoption of these disease modifying and life changing therapies.”
