Oxford Nanopore raises £100m

An Oxford business which is developing small portable DNA sequencing machines has raised £100m ($126m) to expand its commercial operations.Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ investment round was led by new investor GT Healthcare, a pan-Asian fund with special reach in China, and existing investor Woodford Investment Management on behalf of its clients. Other new and existing investors including IP Group also participated in the round. The company has designed and sells the world’s only portable DNA/RNA sequencer.Oxford Nanpore Technologies plans to use the new financing to expand its commercial operations internationally.It will add resource to production and sales and marketing for its products including MinION (portable DNA sequencer), PromethION (high-throughput, on-demand sequencer) and VolTRAX (automated sample/library preparation device).The business also said it would continue to invest in improviement of existing products and expand its pipeline including the mobile-phone compatible SmidgION sequencer.