A novel Cambridge UK life science startup – Alchemab Therapeutics – looks set for global glory by identifying and harnessing the power of naturally protective antibodies to combat a broad range of hard-to-treat diseases.

It has Jane Osbourn, formerly head of the MedImmune Cambridge operation for AstraZeneca, as chief scientific officer and a set of executives and advisers to make investors’ mouths water.

Alchemab’s proposition is predicated not on the well worn approach of why certain people succumb to certain diseases but why certain people are less affected by disease and what factors contribute to the health of the ageing well.

How can some people live to a ripe old age, often past 100, without succumbing to conditions that can cripple or kill others who are much younger?

Alchemab has a foothold in Oxford but is committing to a Cambridge base and has been hiring hard throughout the COVID-19 crisis. Significantly, it has negotiated an alliance with global genome sequencing giant Illumina, whose European research nervecentre is at Granta Park.

Understanding the immune response by deep sequencing is key to Alchemab’s ambitions to scale but then so is accessing other crucial data relating to the individuals they study, for example, the patient’s  genetic background; microbiome – the genetic material of all the microbes (bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses) – that live on and inside the human gut; cognitive health and external factors such as environment and pollution.

Osbourn tells me the company has sufficient funding to comfortably get to Series A as it eyes inevitable global expansion. The Series A is not pressing and will be executed “‘when the time is right.”

Alchemab tags itself ‘the protective self antibody company’ with the aim of identifying novel unbiased targets and therapeutics by evaluating convergent protective antibody responses in groups of resilient patients. It is leveraging functional and advanced analytical approaches to evaluate antibody repertoires obtained from RNA from blood & tissue samples and its initial therapeutic focuses are on the areas of oncology, neurodegeneration and infectious diseases.

Heavyweight investors and collaborators are already on board and CEO Alex Leech, ex-Pfizer, has worked in Big Pharma and has years of experience starting biotechs. Scientific founders include Ruth McKernan of SV Health Managers and formerly CEO of Innovate UK and head of Pfizer’s site in Cambridge.

Osbourn shared with me some pretty chilling statistics covering disease areas such as breast, pancreatic, lung and inherited bowel cancer as well as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s Disease and Frontotemporal dementia.

Alchemab is developing an impressive data gathering platform and patient sample hub that will grow exponentially over time, building profiles on individuals and populations that will help inform disease targets for drug discovery and novel therapeutics.

As Osbourn explains, self antibodies are known to have a role in modifying disease: They have been widely implicated in HIV, Amyotropic lateral sclerosis, breast cancer, malaria, auto-immune disease, MS, RA, T1DM, pneumonitis in AIREs disease and numerous neurological conditions.

The company’s platform-based approach profits from a unique combination of repertoire analysis, proteomic profiling and deep learning capabilities combined with proven therapeutics discovery expertise via a world-class team.

Its concept is entirely novel – focused on groups of resilient individuals as opposed to individual responses. This provides a higher likelihood of functional validation from the outset, Osbourn says.

The close working relationship with Illumina will enable sequencing to a greater sample depth meaning a higher chance of identifying less abundant antibodies, she adds.

And a global network of internationally leading collaborators provides a ready springboard for cross-border growth. US funders are among those to provide early stage capital and early collaborations with a partner in Europe should enable major expansion across the Channel.

Alchemab has already shown itself to be fleet-footed. It only lodged the early stage funding in the bank in November but during the lockdown put out several offers to potential new hires and also managed to produce a thought provoking paper on COVID-19.

It reported that deep sequencing of B cell receptor (BCR) heavy chains from a cohort of 19 COVID-19 patients from the UK revealed a stereotypical naive immune response to SARS-CoV-2 which is consistent across patients and may be a positive indicator of disease outcome (See https://www.biorxiv.org/).

This is only a snapshot of the exciting startup which has managed to put old heads on young shoulders in terms of the experienced practitioners steering the fortunes of a new kid on the block.

• 30th Anniversary edition of Business Weekly now available to read online.

Avacta Group plc in Cambridge is planning to rapidly accelerate its cancer therapies technology through a proposed £45 million fundraising.

It plans to use the proceeds to scale its broader Affimer® diagnostic products opportunities – including COVID-19 antigen rapid testing – and fast-track its in-house Affimer® and pre|CISION™ cancer therapy pipeline.

The growth blueprint includes expansion of the group’s in-house diagnostics product development capabilities spanning facilities, capital equipment, scientific, commercial and senior leadership teams. Commercial partnerships will also be fast-tracked.

Avacta says it is scaling from a strong base. Revenues for the 17 months to December 31 doubled to £5.5 million from £2.76m (12 months ended July 31, 2018). 

Importantly, revenues from the Affimer® diagnostics business increased over the same period, by 135 per cent as more customer evaluations of the Affimer® platform got underway. Avacta says its order intake and sales pipeline into 2020 are “the strongest to date.”

As Avacta CEO Dr Alastair Smith previously revealed, Avacta has entered into an exclusive global distribution agreement with Medusa19 for direct-to-consumer sales of its newly developed saliva-based rapid test for the COVID-19 antigen, subject to regulatory approvals. 

Shortly before this it announced a partnership with Cytiva (formerly GE Healthcare Life Sciences) to develop an Affimer®-based point-of-care rapid antigen test (in the form of a simple test strip), to indicate whether a person has the COVID-19 infection. The test is intended to give a result within minutes and is for use by both healthcare professionals and consumers.

Avacta is also collaborating with US business Adeptrix to develop and manufacture an Affimer®-based BAMS™ (bead-assisted mass spectrometry) coronavirus antigen test that will provide clinicians with a significant expansion of the available testing capacity for COVID-19 infection in hospitals.

The consensus view is that hundreds of millions of antigen tests will be required per month to support the fight against the pandemic and initial easing of the lock-down during 2020, and to deal with the long term challenge of endemic COVID-19.

Avacta is growing its senior team in the diagnostics division to include regulatory affairs and product management roles, and expand the commercial and technical teams to support the development and commercialisation of the COVID-19 test and its wider product pipeline.

The group will grow the therapeutics development team in Cambridge and add further clinical development resources to support the transition of several Affimer and pre|CISION therapeutic programmes through preclinical development into the clinic.

The  board anticipates strong near-term newsflow relating to the COVID-19 test developments with Cytiva and Adeptrix, further commercial partnerships to exploit the COVID-19 Affimer reagents and from ongoing commercial and technical progress in the core therapeutic and diagnostic businesses.

Acorn Computers was marooned up a murky creek struggling to locate a paddle; founders of a fledgling Arm were desperate to jump ship. The situation could have escalated into a technology Titanic – a brave new world sinking in a battered heap. 

Instead, Arm ended up a titan and sailed on to bright new horizons – and even saved the mother ship, Acorn.

Cambridge technology entrepreneur Stan Boland – then at the epicentre as the foundations rocked and rumbled – relives the rescue saga with a warts and all assessment in Business Weekly’s iconic 30th Anniversary edition out this week.

In a definitive review of Cambridge’s transition from cabbage patch in 1990 to billionaire’s row in 2020 – with science and technology driving the transformation – Boland also goes under the hood of his other tech companies, recalling the bruises as well as the brilliance. 

Sir Christopher Evans, founding father of the Cambridge biotechnology cluster, is equally frank about the fight for funding that took him and others first to the City and then to global investors to ensure brilliant life science research cultivated on Cambridge’s doorstep did not wither on the vine. Now Cambridge is one of the world’s leading life science hubs.

Relive the post 9/11 fall-out in the ‘special relationship’ as the White House bought a Cambridge smallpox vaccine to fight the perceived threat of biological warfare while Britain gave its contract to a Labour donor – and was accused of using the wrong strain in the vaccine and putting the UK population at risk.

As well as charting the major corporate events over the 30 years that Business Weekly has promoted this region to a global audience, our Anniversary edition demonstrates how much other countries and governments have come to rely on Cambridge science & technology to solve critical problems.

Read how US defence chiefs have turned to Cambridge technology to eradicate weaknesses in integrated circuit chips – a vulnerability that threatens economic and national security.

How world governments have turned to Cambridge Big Biotech and pharma players to lead the fight against coronavirus: How Cambridge cluster companies are changing the core paradigm of the international life science industry.

And as Business Weekly continues to dictate the news agenda, read about the commercialisation of the world’s first flying car; major new fundraisings and financial innovation; how former Home Secretary Amber Rudd has joined the advisory board of cyber security world leader Darktrace; and FFI’s new $1m conservation project steered from Cambridge with global funding to help counter another aspect of the COVID-19 fall-out.

Throughout our 30-year history, Business Weekly has piled exclusive upon exclusive and we lead our Anniversary edition with another great insight on a company poised to make a difference to healthcare for decades to come.

Co-steered by brilliant former CAT and MedImmuine (AstraZeneca) scientist Jane Osbourn, Alchemab flips the coin of life science research and unveils a platform that focuses not on why so many people become ill but why increasing numbers stay well for longer – increasingly past the age of 100.

The ageing well! More Cambridge innovation; and this backed by an alliance with genomic sequencing ace Illumina. 

Alchemab is yet another One2Watch for investors and business builders brought to you exclusively by Business Weekly.

• To read the latest edition of Business Weekly visit our epaper.

One of the lasting consequences of COVID-19 could be a fundamental shift in working practices across the country with many people continuing to work from home long after the lockdown eases, writes Heather Tulloch, Senior Tax Manager Ashcroft Partnership LLP.

This new breed of ‘homeworker’ might be wondering to what extent they can be reimbursed by their employer for additional household costs. The options are summarised below. 

It is important that both the employer and the employee understand the tax implications and reporting requirements.  

Fixed rate allowance
The simplest option: an employer can reimburse any employee who works from home (at least once every week) for “additional” household costs incurred, up to a cap of £6 per week. 

Provision of tools or services 
Another option is the exemption that allows employers to provide employees with tools or equipment that are needed to carry out their duties: for instance, a set of tools for a tradesman or IT equipment and office furniture for an office worker. 

For the exemption to apply, the private use of the assets should be insignificant, and the employer must purchase it directly, rather than reimburse the employee for the purchase cost.

A similar exemption exists for the provision of any services that are required for employees to work from home, provided that any personal use of the services is “not significant” and the contract for the services is between the employer and the supplier. An example would be the provision of a telephone line at home to be used solely for making business calls. 

Job-related costs
An alternative to the fixed weekly rate of £6 is the reimbursement by an employer of any additional costs incurred, such as an increase in utilities bills from additional heating and lighting. 

The exemption only applies to expenses incurred “wholly, exclusively and necessarily” by the employee in the course of doing their job, so it will not cover the employer contributing to fixed household expenses such as mortgage interest or council tax, or any contribution to costs that are not based on the actual usage, such as fixed monthly broadband or phone costs. 

All the above are exempt benefits, but any other contributions from employers to employees are likely to trigger tax charges and reporting requirements.

Home office
A director-shareholder who is running a business from home may not be happy with the £6 a week exemption, nor with the administrative and national insurance burden of preparing a P11d (required where a business is meeting some of the fixed costs of running the property). 

The solution is for the business to rent part of the house from the homeowner. In these circumstances, the rent will be a deductible expense for the business and the homeowner will have rental income that will need to be reported on their self-assessment return. The homeowner can claim a proportion of the house running costs against the rental income. 

Carefully calculated, the net rental income arising in the hands of the individual will be minimal and, since it is property rather than employment income, there will be no National Insurance. 

It should be noted that any rooms that are used exclusively for the business will restrict the principal private residence relief available to mitigate capital gains tax on a future sale of the property and trigger a liability to business rates. Caution is advised!

Summary
The most appropriate method will depend on the circumstances. For most employees, the fixed rate allowance and specific exemption for the provision of equipment will be sufficient, but for those incurring significant costs, such as owner-managers running a business from home, the rental agreement option should be considered.  

What is clear is that, as our working patterns change and we become more flexible and agile in our working practices, the tax considerations around working from home will become more relevant.

For further information on any of the above, please contact Heather Tulloch, Senior Tax Manager at Ashcroft, on 01763 209113. 

Three businesses with East of England operations are helping US defence chiefs eradicate weaknesses in digital integrated circuit chips.

Cambridge duo Arm and UltraSoc and Northrop Grumman in Market Deeping are in two teams hand-picked by The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the US to protect the ICs from exploitation which threatens economic and national security.

DARPA is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. 

As Internet of Things devices rapidly increase in popularity and deployment, economic attackers and nation-states alike are shifting their attention to the vulnerabilities of digital IC chips. 

Threats to IC chips are well known, and despite various measures designed to mitigate them, hardware developers have largely been slow to implement security solutions due to limited expertise, high cost and complexity, and lack of security-oriented design tools integrated with supporting semiconductor intellectual property. 

When unsecure circuits are used in critical systems, the lack of embedded countermeasures exposes them to exploitation. 

To address the growing threat this poses from an economic and national security perspective DARPA developed the Automatic Implementation of Secure Silicon (AISS) program. AISS aims to automate the process of incorporating scalable defence mechanisms into chip designs, while allowing designers to explore chip economics versus security trade-offs based on the expected application and intent while maximising designer productivity.

DARPA has now announced two research teams to take on AISS’ technical challenges. Two teams of academic, commercial, and defence industry researchers and engineers will explore the development of a novel design tool and IP ecosystem – which includes tool vendors, chip developers, and IP licensors – allowing, eventually, defences to be incorporated efficiently into chip designs. 

The expected AISS technologies could enable hardware developers to not only integrate the appropriate level of state-of-the-art security based on the target application, but also balance security with economic considerations like power consumption, die area, and performance.

“The ultimate goal of the AISS program is to accelerate the timeline from architecture to security-hardened RTL from one year, to one week – and to do so at a substantially reduced cost,” said the DARPA program manager leading AISS, Serge Leef.

The two AISS research teams are:-

• Synopsys, Arm, Boeing, Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Research at the University of Florida, Texas A&M University, UltraSoC, and University of California, San Diego
• Northrop Grumman, IBM, University of Arkansas, and University of Florida

“AISS is bringing together leading minds in security research and semiconductor design to focus on a problem of national importance,” said Leef. “AISS will drive revolutionary advances in design productivity and have a dramatic and positive impact on our electronic supply chain security.”

AISS consists of two primary research areas that address four fundamental silicon security vulnerabilities: side channel attacks, hardware Trojans, reverse engineering, and supply chain attacks, such as counterfeiting, recycling, re-marking, cloning, and over-production. 

The first research area involves the development of a security engine that combines the latest academic research and commercial technology into an upgradable platform that can be used to defend chips against attacks and provide an infrastructure to manage these hardened chips as they progress through their lifecycle.

Synopsys and Northrop Grumman will each be developing Arm®-based architectures that include security engines offering different approaches and demonstrating the modularity of the new AISS-based flows to accept other security engines, potentially including highly specialised engines developed for future Department of Defense applications.

In addition, Northrop Grumman, along with IBM, will seek to further enhance technologies first developed under the DARPA Supply Chain Hardware Integrity for Electronics Defense (SHIELD) program. 

They will use these technologies as a starting point for the development of an Asset Management Infrastructure (AMI) to protect chips throughout their lifecycle. 

The goal is to implement the AMI using distributed ledger technology, which provides for a high-availability, cloud-based system capable of managing keys, certificates, watermarks, policies, and tracking data to ensure that chips remain secure as they move through the design ecosystem.

Led by Synopsys, the second research area involves integrating the security engine technology developed in the first research area into system-on-chip (SOC) platforms in a highly automated way. 

In effect, this second research area is focused on performing system synthesis or combining the new security-aware electronic design automation (EDA) tools developed under AISS with commercial off-the-shelf IP from Synopsys, Arm, and chip instrumentation specialist, UltraSoc. 

This capability could allow chip designers to specify Power, Area, Speed, and Security (PASS) constraints on these AISS tools, which will then automatically generate optimal implementations based on the application objectives.

Flusso, a Cambridge University spin-out, has raised a $5.7 million Series A round to scale production of the world’s smallest flow sensor in an $8 billion market. 

The round was led by existing backer Parkwalk Advisors and new investor Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund, with participation from 24 Haymarket, Cambridge Enterprise, Martlet, and Cambridge Angels. 

With products already commercially available, the investment will also enable Flusso to widen its product and technology portfolio.

Flow meters are traditionally used in industrial, automotive, and medical products to monitor the movement of gas or liquid. The market is worth $8 billion annually, but is highly fragmented in terms of technologies and applications, and innovation has been lacking in consumer products in particular. 

Flusso’s patent-protected technology enables flow sensors to be made significantly smaller and less expensive, while adding enhanced functionality and without compromising performance. 

The result is enabling direct flow sensing in a wide range of both existing and future mass-market consumer products – including heating and ventilation systems, filtration units, and respiratory medical devices – for which flow-sensing components were previously too big, expensive, or difficult to integrate.

Flusso was spun out of the university in 2016 by co-founders Professor Florin Udrea (co-founder of CamSemi, Cambridge CMOS Sensors, Cambridge Microelectronics, and Cambridge GaN Devices), Professor Julian Gardner (co-founder of Cambridge CMOS Sensors and Sorex), Dr John Coull, and Dr Andrea De Luca, all sensor experts with extensive experience in the semiconductor industry. 

They have been joined by Robert Swann, an experienced entrepreneur specialising in early-stage semiconductor companies, as chairman, and Dr Cleopatra Cabuz, formerly VP of Technology and Partnerships in Honeywell’s Safety and Productivity Solutions division.

Flusso’s technology uses a CMOS MEMS silicon platform, and is packaged and assembled using a pure microelectronics approach. This provides both performance and scalability of manufacturing in tens of millions of parts per month.

CEO Andrea De Luca said: “The energy efficiency of many products could be greatly improved if they incorporated gas and flow sensors, but companies are unable to do so due to cost, size, or manufacturing constraints.

“Our vision is to bring flow- and gas-sensing technologies to all these products. This funding round helps us to scale up and bring our vision to reality.”

John Pearson, Investment Manager at Parkwalk, added: “Parkwalk are delighted to continue to support the team at Flusso. The company has an exciting technology with multiple large scale applications and with this financing the highly experienced team has the resources to deliver on that promise.”

Foresight’s involvement could be another gamechanger as Flusso’s expansion gathers pace. As Foresight investment manager Nick Mettyear explains: “Our unique collaboration with Williams Advanced Engineering and their expertise in fluid dynamics has already seen the Williams team supporting the company and providing valuable commercial insights.”

Local law firms were to the fore in the fundraising, Mills & Reeve advising the investors and Taylor Vinters guiding Flusso.

Microsoft Research Cambridge is spearheading stunning new technology poised to revolutionise video communications.

Virtual Robot Overlay for Online Meetings (VROOM) combines augmented and virtual reality to bring life-sized avatars into the workplace in the form of telepresence robots. 

The technology is designed to make a person working remotely in VR and someone working in the office wearing a Microsoft-designed HoloLens AR headset feel like they’re in the same place.

With more families confined to home and thousands of companies, especially in the technology field, home working during the coronavirus outbreak – and planning to continue doing so when restrictions lift – this is not only an innovation for its time but also a dynamic play for the future.

The advance was revealed in a paper by Microsoft Research Cambridge trio Brennan Jones, Priscilla Wong and Sean Rintel and their Microsoft Vancouver colleague Yaying Zhang.

As they explain, telepresence robots allow remote users to freely explore a space they are not in and provide a physical embodiment in that space. However, they lack a compelling representation of the remote user in the local space – hence the invention of VROOM which is a two-way system for exploring how to improve the social experience of robotic telepresence. 

The technology would appear to be capable of transforming face2face online dialogue domestically and across a range of business, academic and research environments.

For the local user, an augmented reality interface shows a life-size avatar of the remote user overlaid on a telepresence robot. For the remote user, a head-mounted virtual reality interface presents an immersive 360° view of the local space with mobile autonomy. 

The VR system tracks the remote user’s head pose and hand movements, which are applied to the avatar. This allows the local user to see the remote’s head direction and hand gestures and the remote user to identify with the robot as an identifiable embodiment of self.

The authors write: “Video communication has enabled global work and personal life and distributed access to education, healthcare, professional services, and more. 

“However, traditional 2D video calling is inherently asymmetrical, constraining users’ abilities to achieve common ground, maintain awareness and control and share experiences. People can certainly work around these constraints, but they will still be physically and spatiality limited.

“There are two notable ways to add physical and spatial experiences into video communication. One is to use telepresence robots – effectively video-chat-on-wheels. 

“While not yet widely adopted in domestic contexts, they are increasingly common in the workplace. Another is to use an augmented reality system in which remote and local users wear head mounted devices to see one another as avatars in their respective local spaces. 

“These avatars can be cartoon-like or more photorealistic, providing something approaching a parametric representation of the user. Both methods are a step ahead of traditional video communication in terms of physical and spatial mobility, autonomy, and bodily identification. However, they both still have limitations. 

“Telepresence robots still lock users into 2D screens showing constrained fields of view (FOVs) from a remote camera, so while they allow for more autonomous mobility, they suffer from the same limitations on conveying remote users’ body language and expressions as traditional video communication. 

“In addition, low FOVs can result in reduced task performance. While current technologies limit the fidelity of parametric avatars, AR systems enable free use of arm and hand gestures and spatial bodily arrangements. However, mobile autonomy in a remote location is limited to a current shared meeting instance with another person – an AR avatar cannot roam around a remote location.

“The question, then, is how to combine robotic telepresence with mixed-reality avatars to provide the best of both worlds to each endpoint of a video-call experience.’ Hence the arrival of VROOM and move over ZOOM!”

The authors say that, given the evolution of video communication and improvements in allied technologies such as wireless communications infrastructure, more opportunities to collaborate with people not sharing a physical space are arising. 

This is enabling a greater number of remote and distributed work meetings and activities. As a result, such technologies are empowering, providing inclusion and new opportunities to those who would otherwise not have them; e.g., people with disabilities who cannot leave the home, people who live far away and cannot afford to travel, or need to be far away to take care of family members, etc.

A telepresence robot is a remotely-controlled movable robot with a screen, speakers, a microphone, and a camera. Such a robot provides an experience that is akin to ‘video-chat on wheels,’ allowing a user to drive around and interact with people in another space. 

Usage of telepresence robots has been studied by researchers in collaborative and social contexts such as museum visits, remotely attending academic conferences, outdoor activities and long distance relationships. 

The authors provide an inspirational example of usage. In their own words: “Amy is a design director in a motorcycle manufacturing company. She is located in Seattle but has teammates in Shanghai. With VROOM, she can be autonomously present in the Shanghai studio. She has a virtual ‘key to the door’ of the Shanghai office, engaging with the office on her own timetable and without the need to organise meetings with a particular Shanghai colleague. 

“Her colleagues, each wearing a HoloLens, can see her avatar present in any room, moving around the building and if they call to her they can see her look back over her shoulder. 

“Amy can ‘walk’ around the studio to check project progress from team to team, hold 1:1s in her manager’s office and engage in ad hoc ‘water cooler’ conversations with people she comes across. 

“In a specific design session, one team shows five life size clay maquettes of new motorcycle designs. Amy and her colleagues are all able to move around the room discussing the designs, huddling around each model and pointing at various design elements. 

“As people move, Amy is always able to know whether others are looking at her, where others are looking, and can also direct her attention to anything in the room’s context. 

“At the end of the session, as everyone exits the room and goes back to their open office space, Amy is able to continue conversations with a couple of colleagues on the move.

“At the end of that days’ visit, Amy docks the robot ready for another user. An hour later Red, who works in the Brisbane office, calls into the robot and can move around like Amy. 

“Although the robot itself is identical, all of Robert’s Shanghai colleagues are able to know he is there at a glance because they can see that his life-size avatar is different to Amy’s.”

To expand on VROOM further, the inventors are interested in providing the local and remote users with a shared mixed-reality workspace. That is, both remote and local users would be able to spawn virtual objects (such as 3D models, documents, etc.) that they could pin to locations in the real environment and both users would be able to see and interact with the objects. 

The local user would see the objects overlaid on the real environment through the AR headset, while the remote user would see the same objects but in VR. This could be applied in areas like home planning (e.g., discussing furniture choices in an apartment) or remote education/training (e.g., trainer and trainee adding virtual arrows, notes, tags in the training space).

VROOM can also be used in scenarios with multiple local and remote users. 

More explorations can be done looking at how multiple users interact with each other, how to have multiple remote users see each other’s avatars, and how to reduce cost (e.g. with cheap remotely-controlled robots, instead of telepresence robots).

Cambridge life science business Inivata, which was staring down the barrel in a fight for urgent funding, has clinched lifeline capital through a $25 million investment from the US.

A global leader in liquid biopsy technology, Inivata has formed a strategic collaboration with Nasdaq-quoted NeoGenomics, Inc for the commercialisation of its InVisionFirst®-Lung liquid biopsy test in the States.

NeoGenomics is a leading US-based cancer diagnostics and services company. As an established player in the field with significant commercial reach and scale it is a highly complementary partner to advance the commercialisation of InVisionFirst-Lung.

As part of the collaboration, NeoGenomics will make a $25 million equity investment in Inivata to take a minority shareholding with an option to buy the UK/US business outright. 

It will also take a seat on the Inivata board. The new funding received by Inivata will be used to enable the acceleration of the company’s innovative liquid biopsy products, including further development work on RaDaR.

Auditor PwC had warned recently that Inivata had until August to find the cash it needed to survive and thrive. This is some response! 

As Business Weekly pointed out at the time, the technology and team have always been world beaters but cash remains king even in the jaws of a pandemic.

Inivata’s liquid biopsy test offers competitive sensitivity with results being delivered within seven calendar days from blood draw and has already received reimbursement for US Medicare patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), paving the way for the test to be used in routine clinical care.

Inivata and NeoGenomics will also seek opportunities for collaboration with biopharmaceutical companies around Inivata’s liquid biopsy platform, drawing on both companies’ technology and expertise.

These collaborations could further accelerate the roll-out across Inivata’s range of leading liquid biopsy products including RaDaR™, the newly launched highly sensitive personalised assay for the detection of residual disease and recurrence. 

This product complements the use of other tests, including InVisionFirst-Lung, and is initially being utilised in clinical trial settings where it has the potential to increase the speed of patient recruitment through more accurate selection.       

Clive Morris, CEO of Inivata, said: “This strategic collaboration and equity investment provides the platform to significantly accelerate the commercialisation of InVisionFirst-Lung in the US, and bring its benefits more rapidly to patients and clinicians. 

“It will also drive the development and roll-out of RaDaR, our highly sensitive, personalised test to detect residual disease in multiple disease states.

“We look forward to working with NeoGenomics, an established and well-respected company in this field, and utilising its expertise to deliver further on the potential of our pioneering liquid biopsy technology to improve outcomes for cancer patients.”