Existing and new institutional and individual investors from the UK and US, including Lansdowne Partners, IP Group, Invesco Perpetual, Redmile Group, Illumina and other undisclosed investors, have participated in the round. The business previously raised £17.4 million in February last year. It was founded in 2005 on the science of Professor Hagan Bayley.

The Oxford University spin-out plans to use the funding, which was made through a private placing of ordinary shares, to pay for further development, external technology validation and to improve production capabilities of its technology.

Led by CEO Dr Gordon Sanghera, Nanopore Technologies is developing two techniques for DNA sequencing using nanopores, which are very small holes in an electrically insulating membrane that can be used as single-molecule detectors. The techniques are ‘exonuclease sequencing’ and ‘strand sequencing’, both of which combine a protein nanopore with a processive enzyme for the analysis of DNA.

The business hopes its technology will provide new benefits in DNA sequencing by improving the speed of service, cost, simplicity and versatility, and claims the technology is also adaptable for protein analysis for diagnostics and drug development, and identification of a range of other molecules for security and defence and environmental monitoring.