Oxford Nanopore announces ?35m funding round

RNS Number : 8338O

IP Group PLC

12 August 2014

 

 

FOR RELEASE ON

12 August 2014

IP Group plc -Portfolio company Oxford Nanopore announces £35m fundraising

IP Group plc (LSE: IPO) ("IP Group" or "the Company" or "the Group"), the developer of intellectual property based businesses, is pleased to note that portfolio company Oxford Nanopore Technologies Limited ("Oxford Nanopore") has raised £35 million in new funding via a private placement of ordinary shares.

Oxford Nanopore, a spin-out company from the University of Oxford that specialises in nanopore-based electronic molecular analysis systems, recently commented that excellent progress has been made in the early phase of its MinION Access Programme ("MAP"). The programme, launched earlier this year, is designed to give life science researchers access to nanopore sequencing technology.

The fundraising, which was significantly oversubscribed, was supported by both existing and new investors in the UK, US and mainland Europe. Funds will be used to further develop Oxford Nanopore's commercial and manufacturing infrastructure that has been serving early customers through MAP; this includes scaling up of production and logistics and expansion of customer support and application development functions. In addition the funds will support Oxford Nanopore's significant R&D operation including its pipeline of scalable nanopore-sensing products to address all parts of the market. Oxford Nanopore is committed to the development and protection of its leading intellectual property portfolio.

Following completion of the financing round, IP Group's undiluted beneficial stake of 19.9% in Oxford Nanopore will be valued at £128.3 million. The fundraising will result in a further unrealised fair value gain to IP Group of £17.8 million. IP Group committed £5.0 million to the fundraising.

This transaction brings the total funds raised by Oxford Nanopore since its foundation in 2005 to £180 million.

For more information, please contact:

IP Group plc	www.ipgroupplc.com
Alan Aubrey, Chief Executive Officer	[phone]
Liz Vaughan-Adams, Communications	[phone] / [phone] [e-mail]
FTI Consulting
John Dineen	[phone]
Oxford Nanopore
Brunswick Group	[phone]

Notes for editors

About IP Group

IP Group is a leading UK intellectual property commercialisation company, developing technology innovations primarily from its research intensive partner universities. The Group offers more than traditional venture capital, providing its companies with access to business building expertise, networks, recruitment and business support.

IP Group's portfolio comprises holdings in around 90 early stage to mature businesses across the Healthcare, Biotech, Cleantech and Technology sectors. These businesses include Oxford Nanopore Technologies, the DNA sequencing development company, Revolymer, best known for its removable chewing gum and Xeros, which has received many accolades for its revolutionary clothes washing techniques with a much reduced requirement for water.

For more information, please visit our website at www.ipgroupplc.com.

About Oxford Nanopore

Oxford Nanopore Technologies™ is developing a new generation of nanopore-based electronic systems for analysis of single molecules including DNA, RNA and proteins.  The GridION™ system and miniaturised MinION™ device are designed  to provide novel qualities in molecular sensing such as real-time data streaming, improved simplicity, efficiency and scalability of workflows and direct analysis of the molecule of interest.  The devices may be used use in scientific research, personalised medicine, crop science, security & defence and environmental applications.

Oxford Nanopore has licensed or owns more than 350 patents and patent applications that relate to many aspects of nanopore sensing from protein nanopores to solid state nanopores and for the analysis of DNA, proteins and other molecules. This includes the use of functionalised solid-state nanopores for molecular characterisation, methods of fabricating solid-state nanopores and modifications of solid-state nanopores to adjust sensitivity or other parameters.

www.nanoporetech.com.

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