NEW YORK – Fluidic Sciences said on Monday that it has acquired technology developed by defunct protein research firm Fluidic Analytics and is relaunching the firm's platform.
Financial terms of the asset acquisition were not disclosed.
The UK-based company is relaunching the Fluidity One-M instrument, originally released by Fluidic Analytics in 2018, and plans to target it to biopharmaceutical research in areas including membrane protein characterization, vaccine responses, monoclonal therapeutic antibodies, and targeted protein degradation.
The Fluidity One-M uses microfluidic diffusional sizing (MDS) technology for protein analysis. MDS is based on the fact that at the microfluidic scale, fluids flow in a laminar manner, meaning two streams will run next to each other smoothly without the sort of mixing seen at non-microfluidic scale.
Leveraging this fact, the Fluidity One-M runs two streams of fluid side by side down a microfluidic channel — one stream containing the protein sample of interest, the other an auxiliary fluid. Under the microflow conditions, the only way the protein can move from one stream to the other is by diffusion, the rate of which is inversely proportional to the size of the proteins, with small proteins diffusing more quickly. This allows researchers to determine the size of the proteins in a sample and address questions like what proportion of proteins are present as aggregates or bound to another molecule.
The technology was developed in the lab of Tuomas Knowles, professor of chemistry at Cambridge University. Fluidic Analytics launched in 2015 to commercialize the MDS technology but entered administration (similar to US bankruptcy proceedings) in November 2023, following which Fluidic Sciences acquired its assets.
The company said it is launching an early adoption program with introductory pricing through 2024.
Sean Devenish, formerly head of research and development at Fluidic Analytics, is chief scientist at Fluidic Sciences.
"The previous team at Fluidic Analytics did a great job of developing a unique and powerful technology," Mark Gilligan, board member at Fluidic Sciences, said in a statement. "Thanks to everyone who has been involved in the refounding activity, this is now ready to be a truly successful global business. It has been a large effort, and we look forward to being able to serve the biopharmaceutical industry going forwards."
In an email, Gilligan said that to date the company, which was created in February, has "been funded primarily with individual private investors" based in the US and UK. He declined to say how much funding it has raised.