Newcastle life sciences firm raises £11m for rollout of "ground-breaking" Covid detection system

A Newcastle life sciences company has announced that it has raised £11m in its latest funding round.

QuantuMDx Group, which develops point-of-care molecular diagnostics, has raised the funding through the Future Fund, a scheme delivered by the British Business Bank, as well as existing private investors.

The funding will be used to complete manufacturing of the company’s coronavirus detection system, Q-POCTM.

It will also be used for the commercial rollout of the system, which is currently available for research use only.

Jonathan O’Halloran, co-founder and chief executive of QuantuMDx, commented: “This funding round will further support QuantuMDx as we scale up manufacturing and commercial capacity for the launch of Q-POCTM, our rapid point of care molecular diagnostic system.

“The company has been through a transformational year, with the Q-POCTM system now available for research use and currently going through CE-IVD marking, ahead of our full commercial launch.

“I would like to thank our longstanding investors, who contributed three-quarters of the private investor funding for this round, for their continued support.

“Equally, we’re thrilled to welcome new stakeholders onboard, including the Future Fund, to help drive QuantuMDx forward, and to enable the roll out of our ground-breaking technology across the UK and Europe.”