Oxford Nanopore Technologies

Oxford NanoLabs (ONL) is a nanobiotechnology company developing highly innovative products for applications in genomics, pharmacogenomics and high throughput drug discovery as well as for the Home Defence and Security sectors. Oxford NanoLabs was spun out from the University of Oxford in June 2005. It was founded by Professor Hagan Bayley, who is currently Professor of Chemical Biology at the University. Since its inception, the Company has focussed on developing the pioneering work of Professor Bayley into arrayable and robust biochips combined with simple electronic reader systems. The production of the first portable prototype system catalysed a highly successful fundraising in June 2006, in which the company attracted £7.5M of funds from institutional investors. The company currently employs a highly skilled team of 14 scientists, residing in dedicated facilities on a new micro and nano-technology based science park in Oxford. With state-of-the-art laboratories for protein production, assay development and electronic engineering capabilities, ONL is rapidly making nanopore-based detection a reality.

The underlying 'Nanopore' technology is based on using protein pores for the highly sensitive detection of a wide range of molecules, pioneered by the research group of Hagan Bayley, Professor of Chemical Biology at the Chemistry Department in the University of Oxford. ONL aims to apply its platform technology to provide hand-held diagnostic devices for medical testing along with laboratory based applications for drug discovery and genome sequencing. The Company’s longer term goal is to develop multiplexed devices, capable of 1000’s of measurements in parallel, which would be suitable for highly valuable commercial areas such as drug screening on ion channels and ultra-fast full genome sequencing.