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Cambridge Biomagnetics (CBM) is a spin out company from the Cavendish Laboratory (Dept. of Physics)
of the University of Cambridge, UK. The company was established in 2008 following the development
of a technology supported by a $4M award from the Research Councils UK.
The company aims to offer products for the high throughput screening of vast numbers of biochemical
compounds with unrivalled flexibility and versatility. CBM's proprietary technology leverages the
power of Digital Magnetic Tagging to offer low cost, miniature analysis systems for multiplex assays,
by enabling a huge number of biological or chemical compounds to be simultaneously identified and
continuously monitored. The product is a magnetic lab-on-a-chip, serving a plethora of applications
in pathogen detection, clinical diagnostics, drug discovery and industrial chemistry.
The company's mission is to bring innovative magnetics to the pharmaceutical, health care, biotech
and agrochemical industries.
The core technology is based on magnetic microtags which carry unique codes that identify the biomolecular
species attached onto them. The magnetic lab-on-a-chip device combines magnetic sensors with microfluidic
channels in which the tags are encoded and decoded during flow. One scalable product serves the (i) molecular
diagnostic markets (market size $3B) - screening for 10's of different compounds and (ii) the high-plex
markets - high throughput synthesis and screening of vast encoded chemical libraries (millions of compounds)
for drug discovery (market size $600M) and chemical industries (market size $3B). Currently, it takes a
whole day to screen a library of 60,000 compounds using state-of-the-art tools, which are very bulky and
expensive requiring large robotic systems. This magnetic technology will reduce this period to just a few
seconds, using integrated chips of a few tens of microns in size (half the width of a human hair).
The unique differentiator between this technology and all others currently on the market, is the ability
to stably encode each tag with a unique magnetic 'bar code' and to re-write additional coding information
onto the tag as and when is necessary. This enables tags to be encoded with information that records the
'history' of the synthesis of each and every compound of a chemical library on every tag. The magnetic
lab-on-a-chip platform overcomes the limitations of optical techniques that are currently
used in conventional systems, and offers low cost, multiplexing, rapid error free detection, flexibility.
The technology merges existing technologies in microelectronics, microfluidics and biotechnology with
magnetics and enables to offer one miniature product to address many needs in high throughput screening.
The main patent (PCT/GB2006/050406) was filed in 2005 and since then two more patents applications have
been made.
CBM's strategy is to first manufacture magnetic lab-on-a-chip devices that use tags offering 1000 codes
(10 bits) and then extent the product range to devices capable of analysing millions of compounds (20 to
40 bits).
The company is developing a large network of collaborators, including:
(i) Tethys Biosciences (tests for chronic diseases),
(ii) the University of Montreal (for the
rapid detection of HPV)
(iii) researchers from the St George Hospital in London (for the rapid detection of
sexually transmitted diseases), (iv) Proteomica and
Progenics (magnetic tagging technology to microfluidics)
(v) Pronostics Ltd (vi) EMBIO (screening of food samples for pathogenic
bacteria and/or pesticide residues).
The company seeks investments to proceed with the development of its products.
The company also plans to enter into partnerships with established chemical and
pharmaceutical companies in order to (i) implement CBM's market introduction policy,
(ii) use the revenue generated to expand the technological base of the company along
with investment capital and grants and (iii) test the ability of the technology to
synthesise vast encoded chemical libraries.
Partners are sought with expertise in (i) drug development and (ii) multiplex diagnostic
assays. Laboratories or companies engaged in the first stages of the development of drugs
(CROs), i.e. the synthesis and screening of large chemical libraries, would be ideal partners.
Customization possibilities can be explored. CBM is also looking for collaborators who
develop biochemical assays and who would be looking for different technology platforms
to try their assays.
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