Magnitude Biosciences, a contract research company and Durham University spinout, has raised €1.5 million (£1.3 million) in funding. The company will use the new investment to speed up the commercial launch of its VivoScan platform.
VivoScan is the company’s technology for high-throughput screening in living organisms. It is designed to help researchers test and study potential treatments more quickly and efficiently.
The funding was led by Northstar Ventures through the North East Spinout Inspire Fund, the North East Innovation Fund, and the Northstar EIS Growth Fund. Maven’s regional funds and new angel investors also participated. The funding also unlocked an additional €253,000 (£217,000) Innovate UK Investor Partnership grant.
Dr. Fozia Saleem, CEO of Magnitude Biosciences, says: “Our ambition is to become the first company to provide a platform to screen millions of compounds in a whole organism. This investment in VivoScan gives us the opportunity to turn that ambition into reality and fundamentally change the scale and speed at which drug discovery can be done.”
“We are building a platform that can move beyond simply screening more compounds.” continues Saleem. “VivoScan generates rich, whole organism biological data that can help researchers understand how potential therapies affect health, ageing and disease. By making data generation faster and more cost effective, we will be able to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies identify better drug candidates earlier and ultimately accelerate the development of new treatments.”
Based in Durham, UK, Magnitude Biosciences was founded in 2018. The company helps drug developers test and evaluate potential treatments using living biological models.
Its VivoScan platform allows researchers to test large numbers of compounds in a whole living organism instead of testing them only on individual cells or molecules.
The platform uses tiny C. elegans worms, which are commonly used in scientific research, to study how a living organism responds to potential treatments. VivoScan combines automated imaging, robotics, and AI to analyse these responses quickly.
Magnitude Biosciences says its technology can help researchers find promising drug candidates faster and understand their effects at an earlier stage. This could be especially useful for research into ageing and neurodegenerative diseases.
