MicrofluidX Raises Funds to Develop Novel Cell Bioprocessing Technology

According to an April 20, 2020 press release, MicrofluidX has raised £1.4 million (US$1.7 million) in seed funding, which it will use to develop its novel cell bioprocessing technology for cell and gene therapy. The United Kingdom Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S) led the seed investment round.

Specifically, the funding will be used to develop a prototype that the company will use to generate comparative biological data between the novel platform and more conventional single-use technologies. The novel platform streamlines process development by running multiple cell culture conditions in parallel with process control, and enables scale-up to several billion cells for manufacturing at efficient costs.

“We are thrilled to close this initial funding round with help from UKI2S,” said Antoine Espinet, founder and CEO of MicrofluidX, in the press release. “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. The funding will be used to further develop our technology, as well as fund trials with our partners.”

Pablo Lubroth, investment manager at UKI2S, added, in the press release, “There is a clear unmet need in cell and gene therapy manufacturing. 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.”

Source: UKI2S