NanoImaging wins $1.5 million in venture funding

NanoImaging Services, currently located in northern San Diego, will relocate to a larger facility in La Jolla, California, next month.

"Advanced TEM imaging allows biopharmaceutical manufacturers to actually see the complex macromolecular structures they create, in three dimensions, with resolution as high as one nanometer," said Clint Potter, NanoImaging's CEO.

"It provides powerful visual support for structural characterisation and validation throughout the drug development pipeline - promising to shorten development cycles and improve confidence at every stage from discovery, through development and regulatory review, and into long-term quality control and manufacturing process improvement".

"NanoImaging Services has established a unique combination of advanced technology and world-class expertise in large molecule visualization and analysis," said Per Lofberg, president and CEO of Merck Capital Ventures.

"With its straightforward commercial service model, and the potential to accelerate candidate development, the company is well-positioned for leadership in supporting the pharmaceutical industry in the field of large molecule biologics".

NanoImaging Services offers a range of services including simple visual inspection; statistical characterisation; antibody/labeling experiments; and nanometer-scale, 3D reconstruction.

Advanced instrumentation within the laboratory includes a state-of-art Tecnai TEM and Vitrobot cryo-preservation system from FEI.

Advanced cryo techniques preserve delicate biological structures in their native, fully-hydrated state.

Clint Potter and Bridget Carragher, NanoImaging's founders, both hold faculty appointments at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, where they jointly manage the automated molecular imaging research group.

They have published extensively on TEM technology and the science it enables.