Spinomix

Spinomix, a company spun out of EPFL in 2004 is developing new diagnostics using magnetic beads and microfluidics. Their webpage is rather out of date with most recent news from 2009. However, this month startupticker announces that Spinomix has just gotten series A investment from another Swiss pharma company, Debiopharm.

The Spinomix technology is based on magnetic beads which are commonly used in labs for separating and purifying interacting compounds in bioassays. Magnetic beads work great, purify your sample out of the tube by ensuring it binds to the magnetic beads through some kind of interaction, apply the magnet and remove the rest of the liquid sample.  However, in a microfluidic device, clumping of the magnetic beads is a problem when you need the liquid sample to continue to flow and you need to expose as much surface area of the bead as possible to the sample. This is where Spinomix's technology comes into play - they have some kind of dynamic magnetic field which keeps the magnetic beads constrained but unclumped.

Once again, as with many microfluidic devices, Spinomix is planning on developing a point-of-care device. And the markets that Spinomix plans to target is similar to many other POC devices, personalized medicine etc. Currently they are seeking partners for the development of assays. No information given about the cost per test and if they have working prototype, one that looks as pretty as the one in the picture.