Newcells Biotech, a Newcastle, UK-based company developing laboratory models that help speed up drug development and reduce reliance on animal testing, raised £1.2M in funding.
Backers included existing investors Mercia Ventures, Northstar Ventures and North East Finance.
The company intends to use the funds to build its customer base and seek new partnerships with companies with complementary products to enhance its offering to customers.
Founded in 2015 by Dr Mike Nicholds and Professor Lyle Armstrong as a spin-out from the University of Newcastle, Newcells provides 3D models that mimic tissues within the body, which are used to test drugs under development and provide data to support key decisions on which drugs to progress into human trials. They enable companies to bring drugs to market more quickly and at lower cost than using animal testing and have also proven to be better at predicting how a drug will behave in the human body.
Newcells currently offers models of the retina, kidney and lung and also provides a service carrying out tests on customers’ behalf.
FinSMEs
05/12/2024