Funds will help us expand in Asia - Oxford Nanopore
The firm will boost production, sales and marketing for products including MinION (portable DNA sequencer), PromethION (high-throughput, on-demand sequencer) and VolTRAX (automated sample/library preparation device).
The company will also continue to invest in existing products and further expand its pipeline, including the mobile-phone compatible SmidgION sequencer.
MinION is a portable, real time, long-read device designed to bring biological analyses to a variety of applications such as disease/pathogen surveillance, environmental monitoring and food chain surveillance.
Commercially available since 2015, it is in use in more than 50 countries enabling applications within the traditional laboratory environment and in the field.
Each consumable flow cell can generate 5-10GB of DNA sequence data and read lengths of hundreds of kb are possible.
Gordon Sanghera, CEO of Oxford Nanopore, said the funds will be used to expand commercial operations across a range of territories, including in Asia.
“The active community of scientists using the MinION has shown that there are myriad possibilities for real time, scalable DNA sequencing with nanopore devices.”
The investment round was led by new investor GT Healthcare and existing firm Woodford Investment Management on behalf of clients. Other investors included IP Group.
Alan Au, founder and managing partner of GT Healthcare Capital Partners, said the platform fundamentally changes and shapes the landscape of DNA/single molecule sequencing.
"We are thrilled to collaborate with Oxford Nanopore's management team, with whom we share the same strategic vision; to extend the reach and accessibility of Nanopore-based sequencing solutions into emerging markets,” he said.
“We are confident that GT Healthcare and Oxford Nanopore will work very well collectively to accelerate our expansion in new markets, particularly the Greater China markets."
