NEW YORK – Oxford Nanopore Technologies said on Tuesday that it has raised £48.4 million ($59.7 million) in funding from new investors and existing shareholders in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA); the US; and Asia.
The new funding adds to £109.5 million — £29.3 million in new capital and £80.2 million from the sale of secondary shares — the company raised at the end of 2019. It brings its total funding raised to date to approximately £530 million.
Separately, Oxford Nanopore said last week that it is working on a SARS-CoV-2 detection test, called LamPore, that will run on its MinIon and GridIon nanopore sequencing platforms. The test, which the UK-based company is currently optimizing and validating with several collaborators, combines loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) and nanopore sequencing.
Oxford Nanopore also plans to seek regulatory approval for diagnostic use of the test, initially on the GridIon and later on the MinIon Mk1C. This is the first assay the firm is developing internally for diagnostic use.
A research-use-only version of LamPore is expected to become available in less than three weeks. This could be used for analyzing environmental samples for SARS-CoV-2, for example.