Press release: Oxford Nanopore announces £35 million ($59 million) fundraising
Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd, the UK-based technology company specialising in nanopore-based electronic molecular analysis systems, has raised £35 million ($59 million) in new funding through a private placement of ordinary shares. Both new and existing investors in the UK, US and mainland Europe subscribed to the fundraising. New investors include The CF Woodford Equity Income Fund managed by Woodford Investment Management LLP.
Funds will be used to further develop the Company's commercial and manufacturing infrastructure that has been serving early customers through the Company’s MinION Access Programme (MAP); this includes scaling up of production and logistics and expansion of customer support and application development functions. In addition the funds will support the Company’s significant R&D operation including its pipeline of scalable nanopore-sensing products to address all parts of the market. Oxford Nanopore is committed to the development and protection of its leading intellectual property portfolio.
Gordon Sanghera, Chief Executive, said: "These additional funds will allow us both to accelerate and to scale the adoption of our MinION™ devices. Our access program for MinION is progressing as expected, and we now need to broaden our product portfolio and deepen our commercial activity. We can now make devices tailored to specific high value sequencing applications and, importantly, ultra-high-throughput devices designed for large scale whole genome sequencing (WGS). We can also make variations of the core technology designed for completely novel sensing applications beyond nucleic acids."
This transaction brings the total funds raised by Oxford Nanopore since its foundation in 2005 to £180 million.
Note: The placement of ordinary shares in the Company under this fundraising does not constitute an offer of the Company’s shares to the public. No shares in the Company will be offered or sold to any person except in circumstances which have not resulted and will not result in an offer to the public.
Contact:
Justine McIlroy / Anna Carruth, Brunswick Group 020 7404 5959
media@nanoporetech.com
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.
Oxford Nanopore has licensed or owns more than 350 patents and patent applications that relate to many aspects of nanopore sensing from protein nanopores to solid state nanopores and for the analysis of DNA, proteins and other molecules. This includes the use of functionalised solid-state nanopores for molecular characterisation, methods of fabricating solid-state nanopores and modifications of solid-state nanopores to adjust sensitivity or other parameters.