NEW YORK – UK single-cell analysis instrument maker Sphere Fluidics said on Thursday that it has closed a $40 million investment round.
Sofinnova Partners and Redmile Group led the round. Sphere said it will use the funding to expand its international sales activities, to improve customer support, and for research and development, including novel applications for its Cyto-Mine single-cell analysis system.
"We remain impressed by Cyto-Mine's high throughput, ease of use, and accessible cost," Tom Burt, a partner at Sofinnova, said in a statement. "In the growing markets of monoclonal antibody discovery, cell line development, and cell therapy, we see a significant need for such an affordable and reliable single-cell analysis system as Cyto-Mine, capable of performing multiple assays on tens of millions of individual cells per run."
Cambridge, UK-based Sphere is automating single-cell analysis for pharmaceutical development with Cyto-Mine, a platform launched in 2017 that integrates single-cell screening, sorting, dispensing, imaging, and clone verification. The firm raised a total of $6.8 million in 2019 across two funding tranches.