U.K.-based diagnostics firm Abingdon Health acquired a 50.1-percent interest in Imperial Innovation Group’s portfolio company, Molecular Vision, which is developing a diagnostic device called BioLED, designed to test simultaneously for multiple disease markers.
The acquisition will be funded by a £2 million ($3.2 million US) equity investment from Imperial, and another £1.02 million from private investors, according to a story at Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.
Once the investment round is complete, Imperial Innovations will hold a 28.6% stake in Abingdon Health and retain a 36.4% stake in Molecular Vision, according to the Web site.
Abingdon also told Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News that the £3 million fundraising will additionally “allow it to invest in portfolio companies established by Bioscience Ventures, a joint venture between Abingdon and the University of Birmingham.”
Imperial Innovations invests in technologies originating from Imperial College London, Cambridge University, Oxford University and University College London.
Molecular Vision’s BioLED, a disposable, quantitative point-of-care diagnostic device, has an optical detection platform that synthesizes “lab-on-a-chip and light-emitting polymer LEP technologies” to help analyze kidney function and cardiovascular disease. Abingdon told the Web site that it feels the “platform technology could be used for in a wide range of fields, including biodefense.”
Abingdon’s Bioscience Ventures launched its initiative with the University of Birmingham in 2010 to “develop and commercialize university IP into diagnostic tools and platform technologies,” according to the story.
Biosciences Ventures targets the development of new diagnostic tools for various forms of cancer currently lacking treatment options. The University of Birmingham derived several fitting applications in infectious disease testing, drug testing and veterinary medicine.
The joint venture’s portfolio of companies includes Serascience, a developer of point-of-care tests for diagnosing myeloma and related conditions; Linear Diagnostics, “which is developing a linear dichroism-based platform for the multiplexed detection of infectious disease agents in sepsis;” and Alta Bioscience, “which specializes in the manufacture of peptides and oligos, and offers amino acid analysis and protein sequencing services,” according to the source.
Edited by
Braden Becker
