Cardiff: Microencapsulation firm raises £2 million

Q Chip Ltd, of Cardiff, UK, a developer of microencapsulation systems, has announced the completion of a funding round in excess of £2 million. A number of existing shareholders took part in the round alongside new international investors.

The company spun out from Cardiff University in 2003, and launched two products this year. MicroPlant is a microfluidics-based device that enables pharmaceutical and life science reagents to be packaged in precise, uniform polymer beads – resulting in ultra-low wastage, uniform dosing and low process costs. The Mastermix Lab-in-a-Bead range encapsulates all the reagents required to perform PCR in a single dose within the bead. This allows even untrained operators to set up PCR reactions in any thermal cycler system, while giving highly reproducible results.

“This de-skills PCR processing through packaging of reagents in a single dose bead. We have calculated it can reduce the time involved by up to ninety per cent,” commented Jo Daniels, Q Chip’s Chief Scientific Officer. “We believe our products will hasten field-based testing of bio-threats and food chain contaminants as well as point of care diagnostics for human health care.” Daniels added, “It’s this sort of market potential that generated so much interest amongst existing and new investors.”