Microencapsulation specialist closes

Cardiff-based company Q Chip, a leading developer of microencapsulation solutions, has completed an investment funding round worth over £2m.

News of the investment follows two significant product launches this year. MicroPlant is a microfluidics-based device, which enables pharmaceutical and life science reagents to be packaged in precise, uniform polymer beads resulting in ultra-low wastage, uniform dosing & morphology and low process costs.

And the new ReaX Mastermix Lab-in-a-Bead range encapsulates all the reagents required to perform PCR in a single dose within the bead. This allows even untrained operators to set up PCR reactions in any thermal cycler system, whilst giving highly reproducible results.

"ReaX de-skills PCR processing through packaging of reagents in a single dose bead," said Dr Jo Daniels, Q Chip's chief scientific officer. "We have calculated it can reduce the time involved by up to 90%."

"We believe our products will hasten field-based testing of bio-threats and food chain contaminants as well as point of care diagnostics for human health care. It's this sort of market potential that generated so much interest amongst existing and new investors."