Press Releases
MicrofluidX raises £3.3 million to develop their next generation advanced therapy manufacturing platform
The funding will advance development of the Cyto Engine™ platform and enable new trials with end users
Stevenage, UK, December 8, 2022 — MicrofluidX (MFX), a UK based provider of next-generation bioreactors for cell research and manufacturing, today announces £3.3 million of secured investments, bringing the company’s total funding to date to £7million. MFX’s next generation platform, the Cyto Engine™, addresses the need for an affordable, scalable cell culture platform to revolutionize research, facilitate large-scale manufacture, and enable widespread access to advanced therapies.
The latest round of funding has been secured from Longwall Ventures, an Oxford-based venture capital firm focussed on businesses harnessing science R&D to address the global challenges of tomorrow, alongside UKI2S, Perscitus, J.B. Ugland Venture AS, Puffin Point Ltd, and Esco LifeSciences.
“Advanced therapy manufacturing is hindered by out of date, inadequate manufacturing technologies,” said Antoine Espinet, CEO of MFX. “Our aim to commoditize manufacturing for cell and gene therapies through automation, digitalization, and the adoption of machine learning is supported by our investors, who appreciate the incredible impact this could have on the cell and gene therapy sector, and ultimately patients around the world.”
“We’ve been really impressed by how quickly the MicrofluidX team have developed their exciting technology platform and proved its potential,” said Rebecca Todd from Longwall Ventures. “New manufacturing solutions for cell-based therapies are urgently needed, and we are confident that the MicrofluidX system, offering seamless progression from process to development to full-scale production capacity, will have an important role to play.”
MFX is addressing the two large pain points faced by the advanced therapies industry, commercialization and clinical translation. By providing a truly scalable bioprocessing platform with complete integration of online process analytical tools and data analytics powered by machine learning, they hope the Cyto Engine™ will reduce the cost and time of advanced therapy development and help bring these life-saving treatments to patients. Their investors believe that the Cyto Engine™ could fill the current gap in the market for next generation cell and gene therapy manufacturing platforms.
“UKI2S backs transformative technologies and MicrofluidX’s technology can solve one of the great supply chain barriers in next-generation medicines. We are delighted to be investing again as the company scales,” said Oliver Sexton from UKI2S.
“We are excited by the results we have seen to date and believe there is a real gap in the market for a bioprocessing system that can scale up from research to GMP manufacturing without changing the process,” said Charles Shortland from Perscitus LLP.
“J.B. Ugland Venture AS are proud to be invested in MicrofluidX; we consider their development work for cell and gene therapies to be of great importance,” said Richard Coulling from J.B. Ugland Venture AS.
“Esco Lifesciences Group has been actively investing in linearly scalable single use bioprocessing tools with enabling first in class technologies. Together with our cGMP CDMO Affliate Esco Aster we look forward to collaborating with MicrofluidX to bring the product to market for potential distribution in Asia, as well as planning with our cancer collaborators for a FIM CD19 CAR-T in Singapore by 2025,” said Xiangliang Lin, Esco Aster Founder, President & CEO.
In addition to product development, the new funding will be used to set up further external trials with end users, including the recently announced pilot manufacturing feasibility line with VTT Finland and Jabil Healthcare. This follows the successful trials automating the expansion of T cells with the Cell and Gene Catapult, and Mesenchymal Stem Cells with Stemmatters.
“We are charging forward on our mission to develop the most precise, scalable, automated bioprocessing platform for the cell and gene manufacturing sector. We want to bring precision biology to patients, and we are grateful to our funders for helping us to do so,” added Antoine Espinet.