IQ Capital and Northern Gritstone have a led a £3.5 million seed funding round in Imperagen, a life sciences company building unique technology to accelerate the development of enzyme biocatalysts.
This represents the company’s first significant external capital raise.
The IP-rich firm is a spinout from the University of Manchester led by serial entrepreneur Dr Andrew Almond, who co-founded Conformetrix, now listed on AIM as C4X Discovery.
Imperagen will use the funding to support the development and validation of its ultra-fast enzyme engineering platform. Its ambition is to initially target its novel enzyme products at the manufacture of complex drug molecules, with the longer-term aim of developing enzymes for applications ranging from laboratory tools to enzyme replacement therapies and drug delivery systems.
Its proprietary technology combines cutting-edge computational design with synthetic biology and laboratory automation to speed up the process of developing optimised enzymes for pharmaceutical companies, enabling them to rapidly establish more efficient and environmentally friendly manufacturing at industrial scale.
Imperagen has been supported by the University of Manchester Innovation Factory and was advised on the fundraising by Clarion Solicitors.
