Sphere Bio (formerly known as Sphere Fluidics) is a

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

)-based

Life Sciences This list of life sciences comprises the branches of science that involve the scientific study of life – such as microorganisms, plants, and animals including human beings. This science is one of the two major branches of natural science, ...

R&D company that specializes in

biopharmaceutical A biopharmaceutical, also known as a biological medical product, or biologic, is any pharmaceutical drug product manufactured in, extracted from, or semisynthesized from biological sources. Different from totally synthesized pharmaceuticals, t ...

discovery and development,

cell therapy Cell therapy (also called cellular therapy, cell transplantation, or cytotherapy) is a therapy in which viable cells are injected, grafted or implanted into a patient in order to effectuate a medicinal effect, for example, by transplanting T- ...

engineering,

bioproduction Biomanufacturing (or bioproduction) is a type of manufacturing or biotechnology that utilizes biological systems to produce commercially important biomaterial, biomaterials and biomolecule, biomolecules for use in pharmaceutical drug, medicines, foo ...

and

synthetic biology Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary field of science that focuses on living systems and organisms. It applies engineering principles to develop new biological parts, devices, and systems or to redesign existing systems found in nat ...

analysis Analysis (: analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (38 ...

and isolation. The company is reported to own 25

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

ed products that include instruments,

biochip In molecular biology, biochips are engineered substrates ("miniaturized laboratories") that can host large numbers of simultaneous biochemical reactions. One of the goals of biochip technology is to efficiently screen large numbers of biological ...

s, and specialist

chemical A chemical substance is a unique form of matter with constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Chemical substances may take the form of a single element or chemical compounds. If two or more chemical substances can be combin ...

Overview

Sphere Fluidics was originally established in 2010, by two chemistry

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

s of

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

, namely, Professor

Chris Abell Christopher Abell (11 November 1957Abell, Prof Christopher. In ''Debrett's People of Today 2012'' (accessed 15 January 2012) ''(subscription required)'' – 26 October 2020) was a British biological chemist who was a professor of biological che ...

and Professor Wilhelm Huck, Dr. Frank F. Craig, an entrepreneur, and Dr. Maher Khaled, a Cambridge University Enterprise executive, as founders.

Funding

November 2021: Sphere Fluidics raised $40M led by

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

-based Sofinnova Partners and

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

-based Redmile Group. The total funds raised by Sphere Fluidics as of 2021, is reported to be, £46.7 million through various funding rounds, loans and grants.

Cyto-Mine Technology

Cyto-Mine is a patented single

cell Cell most often refers to: * Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life * Cellphone, a phone connected to a cellular network * Clandestine cell, a penetration-resistant form of a secret or outlawed organization * Electrochemical cell, a de ...

analysis and characterisation system by Sphere Fluidics. This technology is said to aid the development of biotherapeutics for treatment of

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

and

inflammatory diseases Inflammation (from ) is part of the biological response of body tissues to harmful stimuli, such as pathogens, damaged cells, or Irritation, irritants. The five cardinal signs are heat, pain, redness, swelling, and Functio laesa, loss of funct ...

and

vaccine A vaccine is a biological Dosage form, preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious disease, infectious or cancer, malignant disease. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines has been widely studied and verifi ...

generation. Cyto-Mine is said to be an integrated device which can automatically perform single cell analysis, sorting, imaging and dispensing into individual wells of microtiter plates in a single compact system.

Developments and Partnerships

In 2019, Sphere Fluidics in partnership with Peak Analysis and Automation (PAA) introduced Integrated

Microplate A microplate, also known as a microtiter plate, microwell plate or multiwell, is a flat plate with multiple "wells" used as small test tubes. The microplate has become a standard tool in analytical research and clinical diagnostic testing lab ...

Handling and Single Cell Analysis Capabilities. The addition of S-LAB to the Cyto-Mine provides researchers with a further streamlined solution for single cell analysis in biopharmaceutical workflows. On 10 November 2021, Sphere Fluidics in partnership with ClexBio gave away 10 CYTRIX

microfluidic Microfluidics refers to a system that manipulates a small amount of fluids (10−9 to 10−18 liters) using small channels with sizes of ten to hundreds of micrometres. It is a multidisciplinary field that involves molecular analysis, molecular bi ...

hydrogel A hydrogel is a Phase (matter), biphasic material, a mixture of Porosity, porous and Permeation, permeable solids and at least 10% of water or other interstitial fluid. The solid phase is a water Solubility, insoluble three dimensional network ...

kits containing the novel CYTRIX hydrogel, Pico-Surf™ surfactant and Sphere Fluidics’ Pico-Gen™ double aqueous biochip, giving a plug-and-play system for microfluidic single-cell hydrogel encapsulation, marking the celebration of

World Science Day for Peace and Development The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, scien ...

Awards

* 2013 : ACES Life Science Award * 2015: UK's top 50 disruptive SMEs by Real Business * 2017: European Product Innovation Award * 2020: Queen's Award for Enterprise for Innovation

References

Pharmaceutical companies Companies based in Cambridge {{UK-company-stub