M&G has become the latest investor into Nuclera Nucleics, a Cambridge-based biotech company developing protein printing technologies.
Nuclera’s technologies are designed to increase scientific reproducibility, accelerate drug discovery, and contribute to the bio-economy.
M&G will use the $42.5 million raised from investors to accelerate the development and commercialisation of Nuclera’s eProtein desktop bioprinter – a rapid protein prototyping and discovery platform that enables protein printing in just 24 hours, significantly faster than existing methods of protein synthesis.
Founded by four PhD students at the University of Cambridge in 2013, the technology has gained significant traction with customers in the pharmaceutical, biotech, agribiotech, and synthetic biology industries, which are already working with Nuclera to accelerate their innovation pipelines.
The investment has been made by M&G’s ctalyst strategy, which is investing up to £5 billion into privately-owned businesses working to create a more sustainable world. The strategy which has three core focuses – climate, healthcare, and inclusion – provided pre-IPO financing to both Vaccitech Ltd and Oxford Nanopore Technologies last year.
Michael Chen, co-founder and chief executive of Nuclera, said: “There’s a fundamental productivity problem in biotech today. A biotech scientist needs to know how to make proteins to design drugs. That’s like expecting a computer scientist to know how to build a computer to design software. Our eProtein desktop bioprinter makes it easy for scientists to access the proteins they need in a single day rather than the weeks, months, or even years it currently takes. The new financing and partners we have announced is a strong vote of confidence in our mission to increase the accessibility of the drug discovery and general bio-innovation process.”
Niranjan Sirdeshpande, director, M&G’s catalyst investment team, added: “The drug discovery process can be long and costly for pharmaceutical companies, but this technology will potentially be transformational in research projects across many biotech industries. Nuclera’s technology will enable scientists to access proteins to research at an accelerated rate, improving efficiencies, as well as widening access to proteins for research.”
