Warwick Innovations builds on the research successes of the University of Warwick
- Providing expertise and resources to help Warwick academics to develop skills and world-leading disruptive ideas
- Supporting Warwick academics to translate their research, protecting IP & making research commercially viable
- Identifying end users for innovations and deliver real world impact through commercialisation
We talked to Tom Congdon, Chief Executive Officer and Cofounder at CryoLogyx about the importance of having a team of experts to help get his business off the ground.
Watch the video interview below…
Read the interview below…
CryoLogyx makes assay ready pre-plated cells for use in biotech, R&D, drug screening.
In terms of improvement from a technological perspective – if you cryo preserve cells in plates now, your recovery is around about 10% – use CryoLogyx assay ready plates and the recovery is sort of mid to high 90%, in terms of cell recovering viability. What that actually translates to in terms of real world benefits for customers is a 10 times reduction in the amount of prep work required. So, instead of several days you only need several hours, instead of several hours of actual hands-on time preparing the cells, it’s literally a minute or less of work. Then there are also significant reductions in the amount of plastic waste that gets generated from this. So, we think there’s up to an 86% reduction in the amount of single-use plastic that gets used to run an experiment using our products, compared to conventional cell culture.
We’ve done two rounds of investment now, they’ve both been really positive experiences that helped us grow the company. Not just in investment, but also in skills and experience. So, CryoLogyx is at the stage where we are starting to move product out to customers. In the summer we built this lab here, this is a pilot manufacturing lab, so not much research, but an awful lot of product development and product manufacturing will be going on here.
Advice to myself from a couple of years ago would be: focus more on the product and get it out there faster – don’t worry about making something super perfect. Make it like as good as possible and then get it out there in front of people. Get that feedback earlier on, don’t be afraid to push to get that feedback. That’s the best way to make something really really good, fast.
My first touch point for commercialising this was through the ICURe Program at Warwick. So, we applied to join the ICURe Program with this idea that we had for assay ready adherent plates, got accepted on the program. Did customer discovery, which is a three-month program, talking to Industry leaders, CEOs , thought leaders, commercial scientists working at large institutions, start-ups from all over the world – to basically get commercial feedback on our idea. Then we presented that to a team of investors and then got the go- ahead to apply for Innovate money, to kickstart the company.
Warwick Innovations were a fantastic support partner for launching the company. They helped us raise our initial money, set up the legal structure of the business, they’ve been absolutely fantastic with of all the IP and making sure that’s all safeguarded. But also all the 101 things that you don’t really think about when you want to kind of be obsessed with product. All of the extra legal bits, the company structure bits, how to run a board meeting, cash flow forecasting. All of these things Warwick Innovations has been a great partner for that, and basically built the foundations of the business with us.
