Amadeus Capital Partners has invested in Solexa Ltd, a company developing ultra high throughput DNA sequencing technology, as part of a £12m ($17m) private equity financing round led by Schroder Ventures Life Sciences, Oxford Bioscience Partners and (founding investor) Abingworth Management. The funding will be used for the continued development of Solexa’s powerful single molecule sequencing technologies. 

Nick McCooke, President and Managing Director of Solexa, said: “We are delighted to have received this support from such a high calibre investor syndicate. We are now in a strong position to rapidly progress our novel technology, which has the potential throughput and cost profile to perform routine measurement of practically any genetic differences between individuals and any reference sequence.” 

“Solexa’s technology will help to provide a fundamental understanding of the role played by individual genetic variation in disease and drug response,” said Dr Timothy Rink, Chairman of the Board at Solexa. “We are delighted to receive the support of additional high quality investors. Together their experience and contacts within the global life sciences area is unmatched and will be vital to our success as Solexa enters a new phase of rapid growth.” 

Solexa is developing powerful novel technology, which uses very dense arrays of single molecules for massively parallel sequencing. This proprietary technology is based on an invention of its founding scientists – Drs Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman, faculty members in the Chemical Laboratories at the University of Cambridge. Solexa is located south of Cambridge, UK, in customised 12,000 sq ft facilities at Chesterford Research Park. The company has a multidisciplinary team of scientists including twelve PhDs.