Newcastle-based biotech InvenireX has secured £2 million in Seed funding to accelerate commercialisation of its DNA nanotechnology platform that can detect disease at the earliest biological stages.
The round is led by DSW Ventures, with participation from XTX Ventures, Cambridge Technology Capital and angel investors with biotech experience, and includes grant funding from Innovate UK.
Founded in 2023 through Conception X, InvenireX builds on Dr Dan Todd's PhD research at Newcastle University, and was born to address a fundamental limitation in modern science: molecular detection has barely advanced in the past 40 years.
Check out our earlier interview with Dr Riam Kanso, CEO and founder of Conception X
Current methods, such as PCR, were designed for different purposes and repurposed for disease detection, but require extensive sample preparation that can lose up to 50 per cent of the molecular markers being sought, making early signals effectively invisible.
InvenireX's platform uses programmable DNA nanostructures, or "Nanites", to capture specific genetic markers inside custom microfluidic chips. A proprietary AI-powered reader then identifies and quantifies targets in real time, enabling the detection of disease markers at concentrations existing methods cannot capture.
In pilot testing, InvenireX has demonstrated 200-fold greater sensitivity than qPCR and 60-fold improvement over digital PCR, while reducing both time and cost per test each by half, with quantitative results available in minutes rather than hours or days.
The implications are wide-ranging: tumours as small as one millimetre could be detected up to a decade earlier than currently possible, vaccine manufacturers could verify the presence and concentration of active ingredients for the first time at production scale, and researchers could discover biological markers previously impossible to detect.
"Our machine could pick up cancer, HIV or sepsis earlier – any disease with a nucleic acid trace," InvenireX CEO and founder Dan Todd says.
"We're made of DNA – that's the source code. If you can pick up traces of faults and errors in that code, you can detect problems across the board before symptoms appear.
We've built the ultimate needle-in-a-haystack detector – a tool that we can put in the hands of scientists to enable the discoveries of tomorrow.”
Jonathan O’Halloran, founder of molecular diagnostics PCR company QuantuMDx and angel investor in InvenireX, said:
“There are moments in your life that make you tingle.
The first one for me was watching Craig Venter announce the first draft of the human genome, then next was hearing about Solexa, then Oxford Nanopore’s DNA sequencing technologies.
Most recently, it was listening to Dan Todd describe InvenireX’s technology. I believe it’s the UK’s next big technology.”
InvenireX has completed a successful pilot with a diagnostics company that has committed to purchasing the first instrument, with further pilots underway in vaccine manufacturing and infectious disease diagnostics. The funding will support team growth and expanded pilot programmes.
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