Oxford Nanopore Technologies has added £48.4 million ($59.2 million) in new capital to the £29.3 million the company raised last year.
With full details pending, the funds are expected to be channelled into developing the company’s nanopore sequencing devices, used worldwide in scientific research, including efforts to address the Covid-19 pandemic, where Oxford Nanopore is developing a new category of Covid test, LamPORE, and in regulated environments such as healthcare and food safety.
This latest funding comes from new investors and existing shareholders in the EMEA, US and Asia regions and takes total primary investment in the firm to over £500 million. In July 2019, Oxford Nanopore opened its first production facility, and in December raised £80.2 million in secondary shares. This January, two hundred of the firm’s MinION portable devices for DNA/RNA sequencing were shipped to China in January to help with surveillance of the coronavirus outbreak.