Scientists at the
Paraytec, the University-backed spin-out company they established to develop and market the technology, has secured £170,000 from Viking Fund and private investors in the Viking Club.
The company will produce instruments that use miniaturised ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) absorbance detectors providing significantly more sensitive and accurate analysis of chemical and biological samples than existing equipment.
Their enhanced sensitivity and a quicker analytical process enable pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies developing new drugs to screen samples more efficiently.
Thanks to the backing from Viking Fund and Viking Club, a range of instruments - a miniature capillary UV detector, a capillary spectrophotometer and a multiplexed capillary spectrophotometer with robot handling - should go into production next year helping the company to win a share of the $3 billion molecular spectroscopy market.
Prototype version of Paraytec’s Miniature capillary UV detector.
In the last two years, Paraytec has benefited from a range of funding support to help to bring the technology to this point. This includes £25,000 from the
UV absorbance detection is a laboratory technique widely employed to characterise and determine the levels of substances which dissolve in water and other liquids, with light absorbed at different wavelengths in the ultra-violet region indicating different compounds.
The new instruments use a capillary the width of a human hair as a sample vessel, so they require sample volumes 1,000 times less than existing equipment.
The instruments were devised by analytical scientists Professor David Goodall and Dr. Ed Bergström, from the
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