Cytomos bags $5m to advance cell analysis platform

Edinburgh-based life science firm Cytomos has secured $5 million in funding to scale-up market-testing of its platform Cytomos Dielectric Spectroscopy (CDS).

The firm has developed its CDS platform to meet the unmet requirements of the biopharma industry. Cytomos said the platform is high-speed, scalable, and cheaper than other cell analysis systems available in the market.

“Whilst traditional cell analysis only considers reactive parameters within the cell culture media (e.g., metabolites [glucose/lactate], DO, pH) predominantly offline to interpret with 1-2 days in hindsight, CDS can already offer more comprehensive intra- and inter-cellular insights in real-time,” David Rigterink, CEO of Cytomos, told us.

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He added: “Unlike traditional QC approaches to sample from bioreactors and analyze offline due to the inhibiting requirement of cell labelling via reagents via optical methods, CDS can generate results at-line without needing to mark any cells (thus fully scalable and tech-transferable) and will be able to do so continuously on-line.”

According to the company, the need to bring its platform to market is in response to the extremely high costs required when developing drugs. Additionally, Cytomos referenced the difficulties of securing access to the right information at the right time, which often results in important information being compromised at crucial stages of development. Therefore, if its CDS platform can achieve smaller costs and bring therapies to the market at a quicker speed, players in the field can make critical decisions earlier on.

With the £4 million ($5 million) investment led by Archangels with participation from Old College Capital, Scottish Enterprise, and new investor British Business Bank, Cytomos said it will advance the development of the platform and expand its team.

The funding will be used to make decisions such as selecting high-producing cell lines quicker and right the first time, which is needed to commercialize CDS to an on-line platform.

“This investment secures market readiness of Model A (at-line) and will enable bringing its successor Model B to prototype stage; continued timely go-to-market deliverables are all empowered through the doubling of our staff (from currently one to over two dozen) and expansion of co-development and collaboration programs with industry-leading partners,” said Rigterink.

The company is aiming to commercialize its platforms next year.