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Press release: Oxford Nanopore announces secondary placing, divestment of Illumina

Fri 15th November 2013

15 November 2013, Oxford, UK. Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd, the UK-based technology company specialising in nanopore-based electronic molecular analysis systems, has co-ordinated a secondary placing of shares on behalf of certain shareholders. The majority of this transaction was the acquisition of Illumina's 13.5% shareholding in Oxford Nanopore by other investors for £56.4 million.

Oxford Nanopore announced in October 2013 that it had raised £40 million in new funding through a private placement of ordinary shares, bringing the total amount raised to £145 million since the foundation of the Company in 2005.

Oxford Nanopore will open up registration for its MinION Access Programme (MAP) on 25th November 2013 and registration will remain open through the holiday period into early 2014. This is a substantial but initially controlled programme designed to give life science researchers access to nanopore sequencing technology at no risk and for a refundable deposit of $1,000. MinION is a portable device for real-time analysis of single molecules such as DNA and RNA.

"Oxford Nanopore is an independent, fast-growing company," commented Gordon Sanghera, CEO. "Our electronic, scalable products are designed to change traditional workflows and overcome existing experimental limitations. We have therefore chosen a less traditional way to introduce MinION to the genomics community. We are giving MinION access to a broad variety of users. That's because we believe these users are the best people to tell us what MinION can do to help their research, clinical or other applications, so that we can help them to achieve their goals."

"Our recent investments further support our intellectual property position," noted Sanghera. "We continue to invest in maintaining a leadership position in nanopore sensing technology." Oxford Nanopore has a broad patent portfolio, through in-house development and licensing agreements with third parties. The Company has an intellectual property portfolio of more than 300 issued patents and patent applications in over 80 patent families. These cover all aspects of nanopore sensing including fundamental patents for nanopore sensing, and patents relating to DNA sequencing.

Contact:
Zoe McDougall, Communications, Oxford Nanopore
media@nanoporetech.com
+44 (0) 845 034 7900 x2013

About Oxford Nanopore

Oxford Nanopore Technologies® is developing a new generation of nanopore-based electronic systems for analysis of single molecules including DNA, RNA and proteins. The GridION™ system and miniaturised MinION™ device are designed to provide novel qualities in molecular sensing such as real-time data streaming, improved simplicity, efficiency and scalability of workflows and direct analysis of the molecule of interest . The devices may be used use in scientific research, personalised medicine, crop science, security & defence and environmental applications.

About the MinION Access Programme

MAP participants will be at the forefront of applying a completely novel, long-read, real-time sequencing system to existing and new application areas. MAP participants will gain hands-on understanding of the MinION technology, its capabilities and features. They will also play an active role in assessing and developing the system over time. Oxford Nanopore believes that any life science researcher can and should be able to exploit MinION in their own work. Accordingly, Oxford Nanopore is accepting applications for MAP participation from all.