Maven has led a £3.7 million funding round for Cambridge-based Metrion Biosciences (Metrion), a leading contract research organisation (CRO) providing a range of specialist services to drug developers, alongside existing investors Gresham House Ventures.
Metrion provides a highly specialised service that is required by pharma and biotech companies developing new therapeutics that act on an important group of protein structures called ion-channels which are widespread within the body. The company helps its clients explore how their drug candidates modulate a target ion-channel in order to treat conditions as varied as pain, epilepsy, anxiety, cystic fibrosis, and auto-immune disorders. The company also conducts safety testing, looking for the unintended interaction of drugs with ion channels that could cause side effects in a patient.
The Maven VCTs have invested £2.5 million alongside commitments from existing investors, including £1 million from Gresham House Ventures and further commitments from o2h Ventures and management. Increasing demand from pharma and biotech companies for high quality ion channel R&D services has helped Metrion achieve impressive year-on-year revenue growth over the last few years.
The current funding round is intended to provide capital for further expansion of Metrion’s UK laboratories, additional automated electrophysiology equipment, investment in new assay services, plus enhanced international marketing and business development.
“The Metrion team are highly regarded in the drug discovery industry and are ideally placed to capitalise on an increasing understanding of ion channel biology and the resulting heightened interest in therapeutics targeting these channels. Maven has a strong track record of backing life science businesses such as BioAscent, another CRO, which has performed very strongly since the Maven VCTs invested in 2018. I am very much looking forward to working with Andy and his team and to drawing on Maven’s experience with similar life science businesses and many other SMEs to help scale this exciting business.”
David Milroy, Partner at Maven
“We welcome Maven as a new investor in Metrion and thank Gresham House for their continued support. Maven has a successful track record of supporting the growth of revenue generating health technology businesses and I look forward to David’s contribution as a Metrion board director as we scale our company into a leading specialist pharmaceutical CRO.”
Andy Southan, CEO at Metrion Biosciences