MicrofluidX raises £1.4m to develop cell therapy bioprocessing technology

Pharmaceutical technology provider MicrofluidX has raised £1.4 million in seed funding to help develop its cell bioprocessing technology.

The funding will be used to develop a working prototype of its bioprocessing platform to tackle the challenges manufacturers face with bioprocessing for cell and gene therapies.

MicrofluidX uses microfluidics within its technology to facilitate process development by running dozens of cell culture conditions in parallel, enabling scale-up to several billion cells for manufacturing at reduced costs. The company will now use the funding to build a working prototype of its platform that can be used to generate comparative biological data between its technology and conventional single-use technologies. 

Antoine Espinet, founder and CEO of MicrofluidX, commented: “We are thrilled to close this initial funding round with help from UKI2S. We are continuing to establish partnerships with Biotech and Pharma, on top of our existing partnerships with the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult and the Centre for Process Innovation. The funding will be used to further develop our technology, as well as fund trials with our partners.” 

Pablo Lubroth, investment manager at UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S), added: “There is a clear unmet need in cell and gene therapy manufacturing. The key issues such as cost-of-goods, batch variability and scalability can all be addressed using MicrofluidX technology. The downstream effects of solving these manufacturing problems will lead to cheaper advanced therapeutics and faster manufacturing timelines and in turn increase the adoption of these disease modifying and life changing therapies.”