Nuclera kicks on with Innovate UK grants for eProtein Discovery system
Nuclera’s benchtop eProtein Discovery system is the focal point for two highly competitive Innovate UK grants totalling £1.14million.
The funding is made up of a £790k flexible, agile, scalable, and sustainable technologies (FASST) grant awarded in collaboration with DeepMirror, and a £350k Engineering Biology grant to further develop the platform, including evaluations by Dr Konstantinos Beis, an independent expert from Imperial College London, and Dr Andrew Quigley, from Diamond Light Source.
Founded in 2013, Nuclera’s offices are located at Impington’s One Vision Park and Boston (US). Following the first launch installation at the University of Southampton, there are now 11 installs of the eProtein Discovery including at University College London, University of Cambridge, University of Manchester, The Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) in Belgium, and the CRUK Cambridge Institute.
The eProtein Discovery addresses the cost and time challenges associated with the manufacture of the custom protein reagents required in drug discovery.
The eProtein Discovery platform overcomes this unmet need by providing access to challenging proteins in a benchtop system in less than 48 hours. Accelerating drug discovery processes by up to 30 times, the platform provides sequences and optimal conditions to inform protein manufacturing.
The timely and cost-effective production of custom protein reagents is set to revolutionise drug discovery workflows. Nor has the investment community missed the opportunity this presents: Nuclera has raised more than $105m over 10 rounds from 21 investors.
Dr Andrew Quigley, group leader of Diamond’s Membrane Protein Lab (MPL), said: “Nuclera’s proposed platform aims to assess the most suitable conditions to obtain functional protein, and the MPL is well positioned to assist in this development with over 30 different membrane protein controls available.”
The FASST grant is part of the Innovate UK Transforming Medicines Manufacturing (TMM) programme and has been designed to support and grow the UK’s capabilities in manufacturing medicines by developing first-of-a-kind technologies to accelerate patient access to new drugs and treatments.
Nuclera is one of 48 companies to be awarded the Engineering Biology grant, which aims to use engineering biology to tackle challenges in the fields of health, environment, food production and sustainability. The funding is provided by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Technology Missions Fund and delivered by Innovate UK.
Dr Michael Chen, CEO and co-founder, Nuclera, said: “Receiving both grants from Innovate UK is testament to the power of eProtein Discovery and demonstrates that Nuclera has the technical innovation to address global unmet challenges in the fields of manufacturing and engineering biology.
“We look forward to working with DeepMirror, Dr Beis – via Imperial Consultants – and Dr Quigley from Diamond Light Source on both projects.”