Edinburgh has seen the emergence of numerous life science startups and spin-off companies that have been founded to commercialise research breakthroughs. These startups often receive support from local accelerators, incubators, and funding programs. The latest one is Cytomos — the life science company that has developed a proprietary new approach to analysing cells. Now the startup has secured £4 million to scale up market-testing of its technology platform Cytomos Dielectric Spectroscopy (CDS).
The investment round was led by existing investors, including UK’s leading angel investor groups, based in Edinburgh, Archangels with participation from Old College Capital (the venture investment arm of the University of Edinburgh), Scottish Enterprise (Scotland’s national economic development agency) and new investor British Business Bank, the government-owned financial institution that aims to improve access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK.
Cytomos has made something called CDS to help the biopharma industry. This is a big deal because it’s super fast, can handle a lot of things at once, and doesn’t cost a lot. Right now, scientists are in a hurry to create new treatments and make them cheaper. But it’s hard for them to get the right information when they need it. This can cause important information to be lost when it matters most. Making new medical treatments is really expensive and complicated. So, being able to quickly figure out if something won’t work helps save time and money. Cytomos’ CDS platform helps biopharma companies make important decisions sooner, which means they can create new treatments faster and save a lot of money.
The new investment will enable Cytomos to significantly advance the development of its technology and substantially expand the team. The company is targeting the commercialisation of its platforms in 2024.
Over the past year, Cytomos has grown its operational management and strategic team with the appointments of David Rigterink (CEO) and Lindsay Fraser (CSO) who have driven the company’s industry engagement with well-known force multipliers in the bioprocessing and cell and gene therapy space including global Contract Development and Manufacturing (C(D)MO) leaders, bioprocessing solution market leaders, as well as cutting-edge TechBio partners set to dominate the Advanced Therapy and Medical Products (ATMP) space.
Sarah Hardy, director and head of new investments at Archangels, said: “As a highly innovative, Scottish early-stage life science company with global horizons, Cytomos is an excellent fit for our investment portfolio. Its ambitious vision to improve real time cell analysis in formats to better suit the end users will revolutionise the development and commercialisation of products in the bioprocessing and cell and gene therapies spaces. We’re looking forward to working with David and the team as they drive the business forward, making smarter, faster and more accurate cell analysis finally more accessible.”
David Rigterink, CEO at Cytomos, said: “We are uniquely positioned in harnessing the power of consumer electronics technology to meet the emerging, complex needs of the bioprocess industry. On the back of a very successful year for Cytomos, this new funding will now allow us to scale up our engagement with industry partners. We truly believe that, through our CDS technology, we offer a powerful platform which will help the scientific community bring novel therapies to market faster and radically reduce costs by making better informed, game-changing decisions a lot earlier.”
Kerry Sharp, Director of Entrepreneurship and Investment at Scottish Enterprise, said: “We’ve worked with Cytomos for many years so it’s great to see the team expanding and the company secure the investment needed to advance the ground-breaking CDS platform towards commercialisation next year.”
