Sphere Fluidics, who have developed and commercialised a single cell analysis system underpinned by its proprietary picodroplet technology, has announced that it has closed a $40m (£30m) investment round. The round was led by Sofinnova Partners and Redmile Group.

Sphere Fluidics will use the funding to enable the expansion of the Company’s international sales activities in key markets and improve its support for customers. Furthermore, it will expand its product research and development programs, including novel applications for its proprietary Cyto-Mine® Single Cell Analysis System.

The Cyto-Mine is an automated cost-effective platform which integrates single cell screening, sorting, dispensing, imaging, and clone verification and has been purchased by an international customer base including global pharmaceutical companies, biotech, CDMOs, and leading research institutions. The platform can process millions of samples per day, assessing and isolating rare or valuable cell variants or biological products, to simplify and improve throughput across antibody discovery, cell line development and single cell diagnostics. The funds raised will support ongoing commercialisation, broadening the technology’s adoption into new, innovative research areas such as cell therapy, synthetic biology, and genome editing, in addition to ongoing enhancements of the platform’s capabilities and performance.

Frank Craig, CEO, Sphere Fluidics, commented: “This funding round is not only testament to the potential of Sphere Fluidics’ single cell analysis technology, but also to the expertise of our team. The investment will underpin our growth strategy, enabling us to expand both our product range and our support to new and existing customers, globally. Any investor in a business like ours needs to take a long-term view and we look forward to working with all of our investors as we enter the next stage of our product commercialisation journey”.  

Newable Ventures Associate Investment Director Avantika Gupta added: “I would like to congratulate Frank Craig and all the Sphere Fluidics team on their £30m investment round. Newable Ventures has thoroughly enjoyed working with the Sphere Fluidics team over the past six years, and we look forward to supporting the company on its international expansion.

Sphere Fluidics’s success comes at a time when the UK life sciences sector is seeing record levels of investment in 2021 both from domestic and international investors. Newable Ventures is committed to playing its role in championing the sector by continuing to be a responsible and committed long term investor”.  

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