Genetic sequencing specialist Wobble Genomics raises £1.2m investment round

Thursday 2nd September 2021, 10:00am

RiboNucleic Acid (RNA) sequencing specialist Wobble Genomics has raised a £1.2 million investment round led by Eos Advisory.  The spin-out from the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute, was founded by CEO Richard Kuo in April 2021.



Andrew McNeill, Eos Advisory, with Wobble Genomics Nicola Broughton, Richard Kuo and John Duncan outside Roslin Innovation Centre - credit Stewart Attwood

INVESTMENT SUPPORTING INNOVATION

The company has developed a range of hard-ware and software tools that give scientists and clinicians a more detailed picture of underlying biology.

We look forward to welcoming Wobble Genomics as a new tenant company at Roslin Innovation Centre.


Pictured Left to Right:  Andrew McNeill (Eos Advisory) with Nicola Broughton, Richard Kuo and John Duncan of Wobble Genomics - credit Stewart Attwood



Wobble is already conducting trials with some of the world’s largest RNA sequencing organisations, and the investment is supporting the expansion of the Wobble team, strengthening its Intellectual Property (IP), and will help to drive sales and demonstrate Wobble’s ability to improve clinical outcomes.  St Andrews-based Eos leads the investment round alongside the University of Edinburgh’s in-house venture investment fund Old College Capital.  This investment will form part of a £2.15m seed-round including a Cambridge-based venture capital firm, and a small number of private investors.  

“There is a huge global market of scientists and clinicians who would buy our products as part of their sequencing work.  On top of this, we plan to target a higher value market by leveraging our existing technologies with the overall aim of being the first global company to build a picture of disease states that are encoded in RNA.”

Richard Kuo, CEO and founder of Wobble Genomics

“Richard is already a globally respected researcher in RNA sequencing and now has the ability to build a team to commercialise novel approaches that address the big issues and un-derstanding of this exciting field of life science.  The importance of RNA se-quencing and its role in enabling clinicians to understand disease has only just been recognised over the last couple of years.  This investment sits at the heart of what Eos works for – backing the very latest and most promising innovations that have the potential to have a positive impact globally.”

Andrew McNeill, Managing Partner, Eos Advisory

Nicola Broughton, formerly an Investment Director at Mercia Asset Management PLC with over 20 years’ experience of working in leadership positions in the life sciences sector, and a specialist in university spin-outs, was heavily involved in Wobble's spin-out process and investment raise, and was appointed Wobble’s Chair in July.  Also, John Duncan, founding director of Alba Equity, took up the role of Finance Director in April.

Founded in 2014, Eos has a portfolio of 14 investee companies includ-ing Cumulus Oncology, ILC Therapeutics, and Enough. Eos invests in four key impact areas: disease diagnosis, prevention and treatment; energy security, cli-mate change and pollution; food and water security, and; sustainability of indus-trial processes and infrastructure.

Wobble Genomics marks the first investment from the newly raised Eos EIS Innovation Fund, which invested alongside the Eos Syndicate.  

This marks an im-portant evolution for the St Andrews-based investment firm, which has had a successful year to date with its portfolio, including Enough (previously 3FBio) securing a global deal with Unilever, and a 50 million Euros Series B investment round.  Eos is also actively building its venture partnership model, sharing deal flow with like-minded investors from larger commercial markets.  

“Our firm’s focus is on impact investment in Scottish sci-ence, engineering and technology innovation, whilst bringing inward investment that allows local companies to scale into global markets faster.” 

Andrew McNeill, Managing Partner, Eos Advisory

Wobble Genomics has been supported by Edinburgh Innovations, the University of Edinburgh’s commercialisation service, since 2019.  Wobble received a £100,000 grant from Scottish Enterprise’s High-Growth Spin-Out Programme in 2020, and recently secured a £300,000 grant from Innovate UK.  



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