China Invests in UK Biotech Startup

Nottingham, U.K.-based diagnostics startup CompanDX has raised $6.1 million from the Chinese government and private investors to develop and commercialize products in China. The investment is non-dilutive. This means that instead of have an equity stake in the company, investors will be eligible for a percentage of revenue the products bring in from China.

“The China deal provides a shop window for how our technology can be applied in a diagnostic setting and helps us prove the viability of our technology platform to potential pharma and mid-cap partners interested in patient stratification for clinical purposes,” said CEO Simon Haworth, Ph.D.

In a statement, CompanDX claimed the “pace of product development is . . . enhanced in China” in comparison to the U.K. markets due to China’s “regulatory regime and the willingness of major regional science parks to provide funding for accelerated development for products relevant to the Chinese market.”

The company also noted the willingness of major regional science parks in China to provide funding for accelerated development for products relevant to the Chinese marketplace. CompanDx intends to establish an office in China soon, and hopes to start bringing in revenue from approved products in less than three years.

CompanDX is located in the biotech incubator village of BioCity in Nottingham. BioCity spun out from Nottingham Trent University in 2009 to apply proprietary bioinformatics technology to advance personalized medicine. Originally offering support services for oncology research on a fee-for-service basis, this year the company refocused its business beyond oncology to wider applications in personalized medicine for all major indications. In the immediate future, CompanDx is concerned with developing six diagnostic products based on the analysis of public data sets, supplemented by local data, to address key healthcare issues in China.

“The recent paucity of early stage funding in our sector has stifled expansion and potential growth for companies at a critical stage of their development, but CompanDX has shown great initiative in sourcing finance this way,” says Glenn Crocker, CEO of BioCity Nottingham. “Several of our other fast-growing companies could learn from this model, so we will watch the CompanDX development with interest.”

China is in the middle of its twelfth five-year plan, which are programs that the government introduces to give focus to what the country and its peoples’ “goals” will be. The current plan is heavily focused on biotechnology.