Zyoxel, a new spin-out company from Oxford University, has raised £1 million from Hong Kong-based multinational CN Innovations Holdings.

Zyoxel, a new spin-out company from Oxford University, has raised £1 million from Hong Kong-based multinational CN Innovations Holdings.

The company is the first new Oxford spin-out to receive investment from China, according to the university’s technology transfer company Isis Innovation, while one of its founding inventors, Zhanfeng Cui, is the first Chinese person to be appointed to a chair by Oxford.

Tim Hart, CEO of Zyoxel, says Zyoxel’s microbioreactor technology, which mimics the behaviour of cells within the human body, could cut the average cost of drug development by ten per cent as well as reducing the amount of animal testing needed to bring new medicines to market.

Adds Hart, ‘The inability to detect toxicity at an early stage of drug development is estimated to cost the pharmaceutical industry around $8 billion per year.’

Winston Chan, chief technical officer of CN Innovations, a material science company employing 9,000 people worldwide, says, ‘Zyoxel will be the basis of our bio-medical business, which will be a key growth area within our group in the future.’