Cell therapy manufacturing starts with the collection of cells from a patient and ends with the treatment of the patient with the developed therapeutic. Everything that’s done in between at a clinical facility is a part of a supply chain that is getting more and more sophisticated each day as novel methods are developed. MicrofluidX is an advanced therapy manufacturing platform that’s a bioprocessing engine for cell and gene therapy. Blending hardware, analytics, data visualizations, and sensors, the platform provides an automated, smart lab in a box for researchers and pharmaceutical manufacturers. The company’s flagship product, The Cyto Engine, provides not only bioreaction capabilities but also scalable manufacturing capability, serving as an end-to-end solution for those commercializing clinically translating life-saving medicines.
London TechWatch caught up with MicrofluidX CEO Antoine Espinet to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to £4.7M, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised £3.3M from VCs, angels and a corporation. Notable VCs are Longwall Ventures, Future Planet Capital, notable angels are the Cambridge Angels, and the Corporation is Esco LifeSciences.
Tell us about your product or service.
We develop bioprocessing hardware to accelerate research that uses cell culture and lower the manufacturing cost of cell therapies.
We developed a technology platform, which applies to all of our product: The Cyto Engine. This is the combination of a very precise bioreactor (which uses microfluidics), a series of online sensors, and data visualization and analytics. With this, we automate, measure, and scale cell culture steps, which have traditionally been done manually, such as changing reagents, purifying the cells, or inspecting the cells.
Our first product is a research platform which is essentially an automated lab in a box. It allows scientists to run dozens of cell culture experiments in one device, each experiment being independently controlled and measured. We think this will greatly accelerate research and get treatments to patients faster.
Our second product is a manufacturing platform that directly scales up from the research platform. This platform automatically performs sequences of cell culture steps to make a cell-based patient treatment. It lowers the cost of manufacturing by about 10x compared to current manual methods.
What inspired the start of MicrofluidX?
I had a glimpse of the cell therapy world in my past life and was fascinated by it. My cofounder has deep expertise in microfluidics. Both of us were looking to start a venture with a socially meaningful purpose.
How is it different?
We are different because we don’t come only focus on manufacturing automation. We looked at the problem with a blank sheet of paper and saw that we first needed to make a bioreactor that human cells liked (microfluidics) and that could scale up and down. Using this approach, we developed a platform that has a much wider operating range in terms of scale, and unlocks massive benefits in terms of repeatability, process control and process efficiency.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
We are targeting research that uses cell culture, that’s approximately 10,000 labs worldwide. We are also targeting the cell therapy market, both preclinical, clinical, and commercial. The current cell therapy market is estimated at ~$20B and growing at ~20% YoY. Within that, we think our Serviceable Obtainable market will be around $3B by 2027.
What’s your business model?
We sell our instruments and the single-use bioreactors within them.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
We are not yet commercial so we don’t have a direct impact, however, we are closely monitoring our runway and designing our investment trajectory.
What was the funding process like?
We started the process by engaging with our current investors and agreeing on the fundraising strategy. Once the plan was agreed and current investors had committed to their share of the round, they made introductions to other investors in their network and I also build a list of interesting investors from the ground up. I also kept in touch with potential investors from the last round of funding, which is always very useful because there is already a relationship.
After that, it was a lot of groundwork, meetings, calls, deck, data room, etc. It took about 6 months to get the round together (term sheet + filling up the round) and then about 2 months of legal work, including due diligence.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
It’s a lot of work, especially because it comes on top of running the company day to day. But aside from this, it is difficult to come up with an exhaustive list of investors who could be interested, there are so many… Even though I now have a long database, I feel like I discover new ones every week.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the cheque?
You will have to ask them! Ultimately, we are developing a product for which there is a large demand and that’s always the main driver. Apparently, they also trust that the team can deliver them!
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We are now lining up several product trials with potential customers. We will spend 2023 executing on those trials and building traction for our technology.
What advice can you offer companies in London that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
It takes 6-9 months to raise so start early! Second piece of advice is to keep in touch with investors that have said “no it’s too early” because you can build the relationship by showing them your progress over time. So when you reach that stage where you are mature enough for them, they already know you.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We want to place our technology in as many hands as possible. We think people will love how well it works for the cells and how much hassle it removes for the scientists.
What is your favourite restaurant in London?
Tavernaki on Portobello Road.
