Imperial Innovations leads £3M funding round in Abingdon Health

Imperial Innovations Group, a leading technology commercialisation and investment group, has led a £3m funding round in Abingdon Health,  a specialist medical diagnostics company, alongside other private investors.

Oxford based Abingdon Health is a business founded and led by Dr Chris Hand, to commercialise a portfolio of novel clinical diagnostics technologies.  He is also interim CEO of Innovations portfolio company, Molecular Vision.

Abingdon Health will use the funds to invest in and take a controlling 50.1% interest in Molecular Vision, as well as investing in other projects in its portfolio including those from its joint venture with the University of Birmingham, Bioscience Ventures Ltd.

Molecular Vision is developing low-cost, lab-quality, point of care, disposable diagnostic devices for medical testing. These devices currently focus on areas of high disease burden such as kidney function and cardiovascular disease, and have the potential to be used across a wide spectrum of healthcare and other applications where simple, on-site analysis is required. Abingdon Health intends to accelerate development of Molecular Vision’s technology by bringing complementary capabilities from other companies in its portfolio together with Molecular Vision’s platform.

Dr Chris Hand, formerly the founder and CEO of Cozart Bioscience Ltd, which sold for £65 million to Concateno plc in 2007, and non-executive director of Concateno plc until its sale to Inverness Medical Innovations for £147m in 2009, founded Abingdon Health in 2008 with Dr Brett Pollard, the former Head of Life Science research at Numis.

Innovations has invested £2m in this round. Following the investment, Innovations will hold a 28.6% stake in Abingdon Health and will retain a 36.4% stake in Molecular Vision. Rebecca Todd, Director Healthcare Ventures at Imperial Innovations, will take a place on the board of Abingdon Health.