Oxford Nanopore Technologies, a company which began as a spinout from the Department of Chemistry, has floated on the London Stock Exchange. It is the UK's biggest spinout IPO and the 5th biggest worldwide.
The company was founded in 2005 by Professor of Chemical Biology Hagan Bayley and former Oxford chemists Dr Spike Willcocks and Dr Gordon Sanghera, with backing from IP Group. Since its foundation, Nanopore has brought together many multidisciplinary teams of scientists to develop its innovative technologies. Today it has over 600 full time employees, most of whom are based in Britain.
Nanopore's technologies have made significant contributions to research, medicine, environmental monitoring and food and water safety analysis. Its portable DNA and RNA sequencing devices have been used on the International Space Station and to sequence Ebola and Zika viruses in the field. In early 2020, the company's technology began to be used in the surveillance of the Covid-19 pandemic and has since been adopted by researchers in over 70 countries around the world.
The Department of Chemistry congratulates all those involved and looks forward to seeing how Nanopore's paradigm-shifting technology continues to grow and create positive impacts in academia, medicine, commercial settings and broader society in the years to come.
https://nanoporetech.com/
