M&G backs ‘bioprinter’ firm Nuclera with $10m injection
Global investment firm M&G has announced it will pump $10m into biotech company Nuclera to accelerate the rollout of the firm’s bioprinter technology.
M&G’s investment, which follows $42.5m already committed by investors, will allow the firm to accelerate the rollout of the desktop protein discovery platform which it says enables ‘protein printing’ in 24 hours.
Michael Chen, Co-founder and CEO of Nuclera, said the printer helped solve a “fundamental productivity problem in biotech” in which scientists are required 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,” he said.
“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.”
He described the new financing as “a strong vote of confidence” in the firm’s mission to ramp up the accessibility of the drug discovery.
The firm was founded by Chen and three fellow PhD students at the University of Cambridge in 2013, the technology has seen take up from firms in pharmaceutical, biotech, agribiotech, and synthetic biology industries.