We recently interviewed Michael Chen, CEO and Co-Founder of Nuclera, to gain an understanding of how fundraising is a key driver of the demand for real estate in a business that has grown from a university spin-out to a maturing life science company with approximately 136 employees across its UK and US sites.
Nuclera is a life science tools growth stage company that is based both in Cambridge in the UK and Boston in the US. It is a pioneer in bringing rapid protein access to the benchtop employing digital microfluidics, artificial intelligence (AI/ML) and cutting-edge biological systems. Through its trademarked eProtein Discovery™ technology Nuclera enables the acceleration of breakthrough improvements in human health and provides life science researchers easy access to target proteins in drug discovery programs.
The beginning
Tell me how Nuclera started as a business
Nuclera was founded in 2013 by myself, Jiahao Huang, and Gordon Herling-McInroy. We met while we were PhD students at the University of Cambridge. We identified protein inaccessibility as the number one obstacle and key bottleneck in carrying out our research and in biology as a whole. It took me three and a half years during my research to obtain the protein that I required to power my research – this is simply too long a period to power quick discoveries, new therapies and drugs. So, inspired by the work of Professor Sir Shankar Balasubramanian, who invented and commercialised the Solexa and Illumina next generation genome sequencing tools, Nuclera has created a device that enables rapid access to challenging proteins that life scientists require to create innovative therapies and treatments.
