The University of Liverpool spin-out company PhenUtest continues to build on their accomplishments as they successfully raise £1 million in investment funding, including a significant investment from the University of Liverpool through the Enterprise Investment Fund.
PhenUtest is a recent spin-out from the University and is led by Professor Douglas Kell from the Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology, Co-founder and Chief Research Officer Dr Srijan Jindal, Chief Executive Officer Guy Reynolds and Chief Operating Officer Will Wijnberg. The team is thrilled by the continued support from the University of Liverpool and hopes this will help with future funding negotiations.
The University’s Enterprise Investment Fund (EIF) is key for de-risking technologies developed for commercialisation and is available to support projects at any stage. “This is great news for PhenUtest as they work to bring their ground-breaking research to market,“ said Emma Nolan, Head of IP Commercialisation. “The EIF is designed to help nurture our spin-outs and reflects the University’s commitment to commercialisation.”
The company are developing rapid, accurate, point-of-care diagnostic testing for urinary tract infections (UTI) which have a major global healthcare impact, with 8 million people suffering from an infection every year in the UK alone.
As well as their recent successful funding round, PhenUtest was also chosen as the 2022 Winner of The Innovation Challenge, organised by TBAT Innovation. The award reflects the team’s hard work, the quality of their research, and broader global impacts. Antibiotic treatments for UTIs account for 25% of UK prescriptions, but due to the current slow urinalysis process, the wrong antibiotics are frequently prescribed, contributing to the serious global issue of increasing antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
PhenUtest has recently seen a big team expansion, increasing to 13 employees including a new Non-Executive Director Jim Thurlow. They have also moved to larger labs within the University of Liverpool’s Biosciences Building.
“I had the fortune to join PhenUtest at a very early stage and therefore had the opportunity to work towards developing something completely new. It has been a challenging but rewarding process. We have come a long way from where we started, and I fully believe our technology will hugely impact patient care” said Dolores Nicoletti, Senior Microbiology Analyst, PhenUtest.
You can learn more about PhenUtest’s research in their recent interview for Bladder Health UK:Click here to learn more about all of the University of Liverpool’s spin-out companies.