Oxford Nanopore moves into the south Cambridge biotech cluster
Oxford Nanopore Technologies, a company developing ‘third generation’ DNA sequencing technology, is spending some of the £25m it raised in a venture round in the spring on a new base at Chesterford Research Park in Cambridge.
The Oxford University spin out, which has raised a total of £75m in six rounds since it was founded in 2005 is creating an ‘informatics outpost’ at the life sciences park.
Informatics is a fundamental building block of the DNA sequencing and protein analysis systems Oxford Nanopore is developing and the company says that a Cambridge base would give it the ability to “attract the best people.” It also cites the strength of the informatics community locally and the close proximity of world leaders like the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), which is based just a stone’s throw away from Oxford Nanopore at the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus in Hinxton, as major draws.
EMBL-EBI and The Sanger Institute were key players in the Human Genome Project, completed in 2003, and the Ensembl genome browser which makes genome databases freely available online.
The company told Cabume that although some staff would be permanently based at the new facility - including those that fill these Cambridge based vacancies listed on its jobs page - there would be fluid movement of employees between Oxford and Cambridge.
Oxford Nanopore already has close ties with two local companies: it is working with Cambridge Science Park based Accelrys to develop software for its DNA sequencing technology and its partnership with sequencing pioneer Illumina, which happens to also be based on Chesterford Research Park, extends to an equity investment of £11.8m by Illumina.
Nanopore technology is an emerging but fast maturing field and Oxford Nanopore has been singled out as a leader across a range of different ‘flavours’ of the technology. The technology involves passing DNA or other single molecules through a hole, or ‘pore’ in a specially fabricated protein nano-structure (as can be seen in the image above) and detecting exactly what molecule has passed through based on an electrical signature.
The link above does a good job of explaining the basic science while the video below provides an accessible explanation of Oxford Nanopore’s approach:
GridION system: part 1 from Oxford Nanopore on Vimeo.
The company’s platform technology, GridION consists of array chips of these nanopores, tailored to the required analyte and a scalable instrumentation system that can be used either on the desktop or in large clusters. Cheaper, faster and simpler than what is currently out there, it is hoped that nanopore technology may be the key performance enhancer in the race for the $1000 genome.
In a statement released this morning, the company announced that it would also be expanding its floor space with a second base in Oxford. CEO, Gordon Sanghera said: “The new Oxford facility allows us to expand R&D, production and quality functions at our headquarters. Meanwhile, the Cambridge location helps us to attract the best informaticians. Because the European informatics community has such strong links to Cambridge, we believe it will be critical to have a facility there to support our current and future informatics staff.”
Chesterford Research Park is itself growing. Development is underway on a new speculative multi-million pound development, Science Village. The park hopes to attract up to sixteen biotech and “next-generation R&D” companies to the park, which will total 33,700 sq ft.
