SpinX lands Series B financing: Funds to be used to launch assay platform for drug discovery

GENEVA—SpinX Technologies, a provider of biological assay technology, recently secured Euro 10 million ($12.5 million) in Series B financing led by Bio Fund Management. Also involved in the financing—which will support the further development and initial commercialization of SpinX's programmable microfluidics platform to perform biological assays—were Index Ventures, Auriga Partners, DFJ ePlanet Ventures and the CERN Pension Fund.

"This financing will allow us to set up the outsourced manufacturing for the consumable part of our technology, the microfluidic cards, which are produced using micro-injection molding," explains Dr. Bart Van de Vyver, SpinX's co-founder and head of corporate development. "It will also aid us in commercially launching the SpinX technology for its first application, which is the profiling of drug candidates."

In addition to marketing the technology for drug discovery, potential applications can also be found—and will likely be explored—in areas such as genetic testing and clinical diagnostics.

The SpinX technology integrates assay preparation and readouts in a single benchtop device that reportedly increases flexibility in designing experiments and substantially reduces the manual work involved in setting up and performing biological assays.

"Our technology is surprisingly simple," maintains Piero Zucchelli, co-founder of SpinX and head of research and product development. "It is entirely based on off-the-shelf components and technologies. The main challenge in developing the platform was the integration of very diverse components—something we are used to dealing with from our days at [European particle physics laboratory] CERN. At SpinX, the biology and chemistry adds another dimension, but we've overcome this challenge thanks to our highly diverse and committed team."