Innovations Leads £3m Funding Round in Abingdon Health
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Imperial Innovations Group plc has led a £3m funding round in Abingdon Health, a specialist medical diagnostics company, alongside other private investors.
Oxford based Abingdon Health is a business founded and led by Dr Chris Hand, to commercialize a portfolio of novel clinical diagnostics technologies. He is also interim CEO of Innovations portfolio company, Molecular Vision.
Abingdon Health will use the funds to invest in and take a controlling 50.1% interest in Molecular Vision, as well as investing in other projects in its portfolio including those from its joint venture with the University of Birmingham, Bioscience Ventures Ltd.
Molecular Vision is developing low-cost, lab-quality, point of care, disposable diagnostic devices for medical testing.
These devices currently focus on areas of high disease burden such as kidney function and cardiovascular disease, and have the potential to be used across a wide spectrum of healthcare and other applications where simple, on-site analysis is required.
Abingdon Health intends to accelerate development of Molecular Vision’s technology by bringing complementary capabilities from other companies in its portfolio together with Molecular Vision’s platform.
Dr Chris Hand, formerly the founder and CEO of Cozart Bioscience Ltd, which sold for £65 million to Concateno plc in 2007, and non-executive director of Concateno plc until its sale to Inverness Medical Innovations for £147m in 2009, founded Abingdon Health in 2008 with Dr Brett Pollard, the former Head of Life Science research at Numis.
Innovations has invested £2m in this round. Following the investment, Innovations will hold a 28.6% stake in Abingdon Health and will retain 36.4% stake in Molecular Vision.
Rebecca Todd, Director Healthcare Ventures at Imperial Innovations, will take a place on the board of Abingdon Health.
Susan Searle, Chief Executive Officer, Imperial Innovations, said: “This is a great opportunity to combine the strength of Molecular Vision’s diagnostics platform, which originated from research at Imperial College London with the technologies developed by Abingdon Health. We are pleased to back proven entrepreneur, Chris Hand and the team as Abingdon Health takes these complimentary solutions forward.”
Dr Chris Hand, CEO Abingdon Health said: “This is an important step in our strategy of creating a fully functional, specialist diagnostics business. Early detection is critical for improved treatment outcomes and there is a real need for simple, faster and more accurate point of care tests. With our expanding portfolio of products, we are well placed to take a share of the US$11.2bn global immunodiagnostics market. Imperial Innovations’ knowledge and expertise will be increasingly valuable as we accelerate the commercialization of our technologies.”
