Cytomos, an Edinburgh-based biotechnology company, has raised £5 million to scale up production of its unique cell analysis technology.
The oversubscribed funding round was led by existing investors Archangels with participation from Old College Capital, Scottish Enterprise and British Business Bank.
New investment will allow Cytomos to drive sales of its first commercial product, Celledonia™, built on its cell-analysis technology platform AuraCyt, which is already generating significant market traction. Celledonia™ is a benchtop cell analyser which aims to significantly enhance single-cell analysis, potentially transforming biological drug discovery, development processes, and biologics manufacturing, meeting a major unmet need for the biopharma industry.
The business employs 21, largely based at its new premises in Roslin, and expects to add another four staff over the next year as it continues to scale operations.
With its sights now set on establishing a foothold in North America, the company has a pipeline of trials planned with global partners and strong interest in co-development opportunities from high-profile technology developers and a top 10 pharma company.
The development and manufacture of cell-derived medicines is highly complex and expensive, with a need for solutions to monitor and predict cell parameters in real-time. Scientists are under pressure to bring novel therapies to market, faster and cheaper. However, securing access to the right information at the right time is a major challenge, frequently resulting in crucial information being compromised at critical stages.
Cytomos’ unique technology AuraCyt is an unbiased, scalable cell analysis platform which addresses this unmet need, providing a groundbreaking low-cost, and scalable alternative to current cell analysis systems. Using this platform, Cytomos enables biopharma to bring novel therapies to market by up to 6 months faster and radically reduce costs by enabling critical decision making earlier. Its scalable nature makes it unique in measuring cellular physiology based on intrinsic single-cell properties.
Sarah Hardy, director and head of new investments at Archangels, said: “Cytomos has gone from strength to strength, achieving commercialisation earlier this year marks a critical inflection point for the business. With new premises secured and a robust plan to derisk the supply chain, we’re looking forward to helping David and the team scale their operations and secure access to new markets.”
David Rigterink, CEO at Cytomos, said: “Successfully raising £5 million within a difficult market has been a huge boost for the business. The result is testament to the team’s hard work in delivering our first commercial product with international early adopters. Cytomos now has the right building blocks in place to scale quickly, establish a foothold in the US, and continue developing our single cell analysis technology to support advancements in biological drug development and manufacturing automation.”
