USD 5 mill capital increase enables commercialisation of first product.
The Danish biotech company Sophion Bioscience A/S has closed its second round financing providing adequate funding for bringing the first screening system product QPatch 16 to the market.
The investors behind the new financing round are Scandinavian Life Science Venture, Dansk Kapitalanlæg A/S, Dansk Erhvervsinvestering A/S, Vækstfonden and NeuroSearch A/S.
Sophion Bioscience has recently completed the first prototype version of QPatch 16, its new screening station for conducting 16 parallel “patch clamp” measurements for screening drug candidates in the pharmaceutical industry.
Patch clamping is the gold standard for characterization of ion channel behaviour in living cells. The technique is vital for the drug discovery process when developing ion channel modulating drugs and is used by all pharmaceutical companies conducting research in the ion channel field. However, the traditional patch clamp technique is extremely time-consuming with a typical daily throughput of 10 compounds.
Sophion’s QPatch 16 system will be using an advanced consumable plate containing 16 parallel measurement sites with integrated silicon chips. QPatch 16 will initially provide a throughput up to around 1200 measurements per day, thus improving the efficiency of patch clamp measurements by a factor 100.
QPatch 16 is projected for commercial launch in third quarter 2003 after completion of biological and functional testing as well as the final development of volume production set-up for the consumable measurement plates.
In the pipeline for 2004 is a further scale-up of the technology providing 96 parallel patch clamp measurements boosting throughput into the high throughput screening regime.
For additional information: www.sophion.dk
Contact person:
Torsten Freltoft, CEO
Phone: +45 4460 881
e-mail: tof@sophion.dk
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