Magnitude Biosciences, a Durham University spinout developing technology for whole-organism drug discovery, has raised £1.3 million to expand its VivoScan platform and increase its work with pharmaceutical companies. The funding round was led by Northstar Ventures, with participation from Maven-managed regional funds and new angel investors. The investment will also enable the company to access a £217,000 Innovate UK Investor Partnership grant.
Funding to Support Commercial Expansion
Northstar Ventures invested through the North East Spinout Inspire Fund, the North East Innovation Fund and the Northstar EIS Growth Fund. Maven-backed participation included NPIF II – Maven Equity Finance and the Finance Durham Fund, alongside additional investment from new angel backers. Magnitude Biosciences plans to direct the new capital toward equipment, automation, recruitment and further commercial engagement with pharmaceutical companies worldwide.
The financing is intended to accelerate the commercial development of VivoScan, the company's high-throughput screening platform for evaluating potential drug candidates in a living organism. Magnitude ultimately aims to develop the platform so that it can screen millions of compounds using whole-organism biological models. The company believes increasing the scale of this approach could help drug developers obtain more detailed biological information earlier in the discovery process.
Whole-Organism Drug Screening
VivoScan uses C. elegans nematode worms as biological models for testing how potential treatments behave within a complete living organism. Magnitude combines these models with automated imaging, machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics and other automation technologies to collect and analyze biological data. The approach is designed to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies assess drug candidates more rapidly and at lower cost than some conventional testing methods.
The company is initially focusing on areas including ageing, longevity and neurodegenerative diseases, where understanding the effects of potential therapies across an entire organism can provide useful information during early-stage research. Its technology is intended to complement efforts across the pharmaceutical industry to improve the efficiency of preclinical development while exploring alternatives to traditional mammalian testing. By generating whole-organism data at higher throughput, Magnitude aims to help researchers identify promising candidates before they advance into more expensive stages of drug development.
Building VivoScan at Commercial Scale
Dr Fozia Saleem, CEO of Magnitude Biosciences, said the company's ambition is to create a platform capable of screening millions of compounds in a whole organism. She said the investment provides an opportunity to increase both the scale and speed at which the VivoScan technology can be deployed for drug discovery. Magnitude also intends to make biological data generation more cost-effective while providing pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers with additional information about how potential therapies affect health and disease.
Northstar Ventures said its continued investment reflects its experience working with Magnitude throughout the company's development. Investment manager Dr Will Cousins highlighted the strength of the team, technology and commercial opportunity as factors supporting Northstar's continued backing. The financing also reflects a wider effort by regional investment vehicles to support businesses commercializing research emerging from universities in North East England.
University Spinout Ecosystem
Magnitude Biosciences operates as a contract research organization serving pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies seeking to evaluate potential treatments. The company was spun out of Durham University and has developed its platform around combining biological models with advanced imaging and computational technologies. Its growth represents another example of university research being developed into commercially focused life sciences technology.
The £22.5 million North East Spinout Inspire Fund, one of the investment vehicles participating in the round, is backed by Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside universities as well as the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority. The fund was established to support businesses commercializing research originating from universities across the region. British Business Bank representatives also highlighted the financing as part of broader efforts to support innovative UK businesses bringing new technologies to market.
With the £1.3 million investment and associated Innovate UK grant, Magnitude Biosciences is preparing to expand VivoScan and strengthen its commercial operations. The company will focus on increasing automation, building its team and developing relationships with pharmaceutical customers as it works toward much larger-scale whole-organism screening. Its longer-term goal is to make high-throughput biological testing a more practical tool for identifying promising drug candidates earlier in the development process.